"If the young lady is not willing," he ventured, "it is not right to marry her against her will."
Gerald Huntington turned on him sternly.
"Reverend sir," he said, haughtily, "we have not asked for your opinion. You are here to perform the ceremony of marriage. Proceed with it. To refuse, or even to hesitate, will be at your deadly peril!"
His white hand went into his breast, and the priest heard the click of a weapon. With a throbbing heart and faltering voice he began to mumble forth the words of the marriage service. Bowles and his master held Jaquelina firmly between them. Gerald Huntington made every response in a loud, clear, triumphant voice; but Jaquelina's head drooped on her breast, while her whole slight frame was benumbed by a sick and shuddering horror. A terrible hopeless despair was stamped upon her white and haggard features.
"I pronounce you man and wife, and whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder," said the priest's feeble, quivering voice at last, and the new-made bride drooped forward and fell like one dead at the feet of her lawful master.
[CHAPTER XXI.]
Gerald Huntington lifted his unconscious bride and laid her again on the sofa. Bowles hurried the not unwilling priest from the room. The outlaw chief was alone with the beautiful, senseless form of the hapless girl whom he had torn from the side of her lover before the very altar, and forced away to share the terrible life of a criminal who was in hiding from the stern arm of justice.
He knelt down by her side, and took her small white hand in both his own.
"She fell before I could place the wedding-ring on her finger," he said: "I will do so now."