Then Gerald Huntington sprang to his feet, and towered above her in his princely hight and satanic beauty.
His face was livid, his eyes flashed fire. He threw the silken curl into her lap with a muttered curse.
"Take it," he cried, madly, "take it, and with my curse! I am baffled! baffled! In the moment of my revenge the golden wine of happiness has turned to poison on my lips! I have loved you madly, and made you my bride, but you can never, never be wife of mine! These arms may never hold you, these lips never press your own! Go, girl; go out of my sight forever! Go, before in the madness of my love and despair, I lay you dead at my feet!"
Jaquelina needed no second bidding.
The outlaw chief had turned away with his dark face hidden in his hands.
She slipped from her seat, and gliding softly across the carpeted floor, passed between the heavy velvet hangings and disappeared in the perilous gloom and darkness of the cave beyond, leaving the outlaw chief solitary and alone, stricken by some mysterious, blighting secret.
[CHAPTER XXII.]
When the chandelier was relighted in the chapel they found Ronald Valchester lying like one dead upon the floor before the altar.
The abductor of his bride had given him a murderous thrust from a knife in the dark, and his snowy vest was dyed with the crimson current that poured from his side.