“Good-morning, my dear Violet,” he began in a bland tone. “I am glad to see you ready and waiting for your bridegroom. Sorry that you could not have had a pretty and more suitable wedding-gown; and it is said to be unlucky to marry in black; but then, we can afford to laugh at superstitious follies, and our marriage will be a very happy one. Of course, I do not intend to insist upon your living as my wife. As I remarked to you before, you are at liberty to go to the antipodes if you see fit, as soon as you are Mrs. Gilbert Warrington, and have signed your name to the paper which I wish you to sign. But it is quite eight o’clock; it will not do to keep the clergyman waiting, and he is already arrived. Come, my dear, let us go down. You are ready?”
She drew back, her lip quivering, her eyes flashing with scorn and indignation.
“Ready to marry you, Gilbert Warrington?” she cried, her voice ringing out clear and scornful. “No, never! I shall never be that. But I have decided to obey you, and I must submit to this horrible outrage since you have me in your power. But, mark me, Gilbert Warrington”—she paused, and her eyes wandered over his face with a slow glance of scorn and hatred—“mark me, sir, you will regret this step, and the hour is not far distant when you will wish that you had died before you forced me into this hated marriage!”
“Bah! My dear, I will chance all that. I understand women and their ways and notions. I understand your nature, my dear Violet, like a book, and I repeat that I am willing to take all risks. As for regretting this step, how can you say such a thing? I could never do that. It means future fortune and position for me, and you may go to—the ends of the earth, for all I care—afterward!”
She shivered and turned away.
“Well, are you ready?” he asked, after a moment’s silence. “Eight was the hour appointed for the ceremony. I don’t see the need of keeping the clergyman all night. Come!”
He drew her hand through his arm and led her from the cell, out into a long, bare corridor, and down a staircase, another, and another, pausing at last before the open door of a large, bare-looking reception-room. Violet glanced hastily within, and her eyes rested upon a scene which photographed itself upon her memory, never to be forgotten while she lived.
In the center of the room stood the clergyman. He was no impostor, no sham, for Violet had seen his face before in the pulpit. He was a well-known minister residing in the city, a good man who never for a moment dreamed the truth in regard to the infamous wrong which he was about to perpetrate, or at least be a party to, and who never for a moment thought or suspected that the house to which he had been brought to perform the ceremony was a private asylum for the insane, or those whom cruel enemies wished to make the world believe were insane, and who immured within its gloomy walls the unfortunates who chanced to stand in the way of their wicked schemes.
When Violet saw this man, she realized that all hope was gone, save her trust in Dunbar. If he should fail her, then she was lost indeed. For there had been a faint hope lurking in the depths of her heart that if she appealed to the clergyman he might feel some pity for her, and, at least, would investigate the case before he performed the ceremony. But the girl realized intuitively that here all hope was in vain. The clergyman evidently fully believed that he was doing his duty, and nothing that she could say would cause him to swerve a particle from the path marked out for him. So she gave up all hope in that direction, and with a cold, sinking feeling at her heart, prepared for what was to come, while she resigned herself outwardly to the inevitable.
What if Dunbar should fail her now in her extremity? After all, she had only his word—the promise of a man who was a stranger to her, save for the part he had played in the search for her mother, and the fact that he was Doctor Danton’s best friend. But this fact alone was a passport to her confidence. Violet’s heart grew brave, and hope revived within her breast.