Aurore had considerable difficulty in getting together the few necessities which she and her father would need for their long journey. With acting heart and burning indignation she beheld the havoc which vandal hands had wrought in the château. Her bed had been stripped, her clothes stolen, her father's belongings had all been looted. Fortunately, there were attics and hidden recesses in the old mansion where, in the days of plenty, many things had been stowed away. With the help of Jeannette, Aurore searched for and found dark travelling clothes for herself and her father, also some changes of linen; and together they dragged down a couple of old valises in which they packed the travellers' most pressing future needs.

Aurore and her father did, after this, contrive to snatch a few hours' sleep - he on the sofa, she in an armchair. At three o'clock they were both up; washed and dressed. Half an hour later the covered cart was at the gate.

Pierre and Jeannette were going as car as Val-le-Roi to assist at the service of Holy Communion which M. le Curé had promised to hold in his little church. They wept copious tears while they hoisted the valises into the cart and then climbed in, in the wake of Monseigneur and Mademoiselle Aurore.

Precisely at half-past three Monseigneur le Duc de Marigny and his daughter looked their last upon their stately home. Slowly the cart lumbered down the wooden slope. A quarter of an hour later the driver pulled up at the gate of the churchyard of Val-le-Roi.

The waning moon was low in the western sky, and over in the east the first faint streak of dawn tinged the horizon with silver. The little church was dimly lighted from within. Aurore jumped down lightly from the cart, and Charles de Marigny followed. After them came Pierre and Jeannette. The little procession thus formed went through the gate and across the flagged path through the churchyard.

They were within a few metres of the porch when a dark figure came out of the shadow and then stood still, as if waiting for them. Aurore gave a quickly smothered cry of alarm and clung, trembling, to her father.

"Who is there?" she called in a hoarse whisper.

"Only the bridegroom, citizeness," came a mocking voice in reply, "waiting for his bride."

Aurore and De Marigny, numbed with terror, had come to a halt. Neither of them felt able to move. André Vallon emerged fully out of the shadow and came a step or two nearer to them.

"Come, ma mie!" he said coolly. "The church is ready. The Curé waits. Shall we proceed?"

He put out his hand to take hers. De Marigny, shaking himself free of his torpor, tried to interpose.

"Do not touch her!" he cried peremptorily.

But André seemed not to notice him. He glanced over his shoulder, called aloud: "Citizen Tarbot!" and calmly took Aurore's cold, limp hand in his.

Then only did she perceive that there were other people here, moving in the shadows. A man came forward. It was that awful Tarbot.

"My witnesses for our wedding, ma mie," André said coolly. "You're servants will do for yours. Come!"

A small group of people had emerged from under the porch. Aurore felt like a dumb animal, helpless in a poacher's trap. She couldn't see her father, for those awful men were all around him, but she heard his voice, peremptory at first, then hoarse and smothered. She felt herself lifted off her feet and carried into the church. The flickering tallow candles on the altar showed her the Abbé Rosemonde on his knees with his head buried in his hands. Behind her there was the sound of feet shuffling along the flagstones. The voice she dreaded most in all the world whispered in her ear:

"You didn't think, ma mie, that I should be such a fool as to let you run away?"

She realized then how futile had been this attempt to flee, how she had never really believed in its possibility. Even during those few moments of sleep she had been conscious of Fate that was both inevitable and relentless. It was no use praying to God: God was cruel and meant her to go through with this sacrifice. She had thought to escape, and the trap had closed on her once more, more firmly, more inexorably than before. All she could long for now was her father's safety - the certainty that this awful sacrifice would not be in vain.

As once before, André seemed to divine her thoughts.

"There are friends here," he said coolly, "looking after your father's safety. And," he added, "once the knot is tied between us, you need have no fear whatever for him."

She glanced up into the face of this man whom she hated with the intensity of a suffering martyr for a ruthless tormentor. She saw nothing in his eyes but cruelty and mockery. She had the feeling that, try how she might, she could not combat his will; that, like a ferocious brute, he had marked her for his prey, and that she was his thing, his property, the trophy of his victory not only over her but over her kindred and her caste. Nothing but death could ever set her free again. Were it not for her father, how gladly would she have welcomed death, if death could have been swift and sudden, an act of God without the agency of that brutish crowd, whose gibes and snarls and insults still rang in her ears.

Through the stillness she heard a distant rumble of wheels and a driver's call to his horses, and then her father's voice once more, uttering that awful word "Canaille!"

In a moment she would have turned, ready to run back to him, but André had her by the wrist, and she could not move.

"They are taking him back to Marigny," he said drily. "He was doing no good here and might have come to harm. When Pierre and Jeannette have done their duty as witnesses, they can go and join him there and serve him as they did before."

"Let me go with him," she pleaded involuntarily. "Give me one more day, and I'll swear-"

"You are going to swear loyalty to me at the altar first, ma mie," he rejoined lightly. "After that, we shall see."

He led her to the altar rails, where a couple of chairs had been placed ready for them. Aurore followed as if she were in a trance, hypnotized by this powerful will which dominated her and broke her spirit. She despised herself for a coward, and yet knew that she was, in fact, utterly helpless, caught in toils which no power on earth could now sever until this monstrous sacrifice had been offered up on the altar of filial devotion.

The Abbé Rosemonde was already waiting for them at the rails. He had his breviary in his hand. He had prayed to God for guidance, and God had remained dumb. Half an hour ago André Vallon had come to him and demanded his services for his marriage with Aurore de Marigny as the law ordained, and the priest, as a citizen of the new Republic, was forced to obey this law which his heart condemned.

Prayers and admonitions were all in vain. Even the old man could not fail to realize that the sacrifice of Aurore was the only means to save her life and that of her father. With heart half broken with pity he began to read the Latin prayers which his church prescribes for the blessing of those who desire its ministrations when entering the bonds of matrimony.

"Deus Israel conjugat vos...." - "May the God of Israel unite you...."

It would be impossible to say what went on in Aurore's heart. She stood at the altar, mute and passive. Her lips murmured no prayer, nor did she glance in the direction of the tall, motionless figure by her side. She was only conscious of that intense fear of him which at moments caused her teeth to chatter and her hair to cling matted to her moist forehead. Close beside her Jeannette and Pierre were weeping and mumbling, while a small crowd of village folk - women and men - clustered around the bridegroom.

Surely a more strange pair never stood before God's altar for such a purpose. Victim and tormentor, with hearts overflowing with resentment and bitterness. To André the Latin words, the Gospel, the Creed, the Offertory prayers seemed like sounds out of dreamland, phrases belonging to the land of memory, to a land which he had not visited since boyhood and which seemed divided from the present by an ocean of injustice and wrong.

Anon the Abbé Rosemonde came down the altar steps. He had a small plate in his hand which, as he arrived at the rails, he held out to the bridegroom. André sought in the pocket of his coat for the two gold circlets which in the midnight hour he had taken off his dead mother's fingers. Her wedding ring and that of his father, dead when he, André, was still a baby. She was lying so still, so still in her ruined cottage, with a peaceful smile around her lips. What André had thought and felt when he knelt down beside her and forced those stark fingers to yield up those tiny gold emblems of a happy union he himself scarcely knew. All that he remembered afterwards was that bitterness seemed for the moment to give way in his heart to the immense sorrow in which he had not yet been able to indulge. Just for those few moments he felt free to give rein to tears. There was no one there to see him, no one to pity him or, perchance, to mock. And now, when he took the rings out of his pocket and put them on the plate, it was only by the greatest effort of will that he choked back those tears which again rose insistent to his eyes.

A sound like a long sigh came to Aurore's ears. She heeded it not, did not know whence it came. She was staring - staring at those two gold circlets, the material presentment of what her self-immolation would mean for the rest of her life. Jeannette and Pierre were sobbing audibly; the crowd of village folk were down on their knees, trying to recollect forgotten orisons.

Abbé Rosemonde took the small, cold white hand and the other, strong and rough, and placed one within the other. Aurore felt a shudder pass through her body; every drop of blood fled from her cheeks and gushed back to her head, and André felt her hand in his, fluttering like the wings of a captive bird.

With a steady hand he slipped the ring upon Aurore's finger and in the clear voice echoed the Latin words murmured by the old Curé. They were the old familiar words, heard so often at the weddings of friends, a good deal about love, something about sickness and death. Then came Aurore's turn. The crowd of village folk craned their necks to see what she would do. Would she recoil at the last moment in the face of the magnitude of the sacrifice? There were women there who vaguely understood what went on in her soul and who marvelled if at the last she would rebel. But with a mighty effort of will Aurore held herself erect and did not flinch. Something had occurred during the past quarter of an hour while she knelt at the alter rails which gave her the strength to go through with this holocaust of herself until the end. Perhaps it was a retrospective vision of what she had endured yesterday, of the outrage from which she had been rescued by the man beside her, of her father's arrogance and madness which had brought all those horrors about. Certain it is that she did not flinch, not even when she in turn echoed the words murmured by the Curé. She murmured the Latin words not understanding them altogether, and the Abbé Rosemonde in the simplicity of his heart barely mumbled those wherein she should have sworn to cherish her tyrant, the cruel wrecker of her happiness.

Soon it was all over. André Vallon, the demagogue, the child of this bloody revolution, was the lawful lord and master of Aurore de Marigny, the descendant of kings. The village folk gave a sigh of satisfaction. They felt that now they were the equals of those great people up in Paris whose will was law, whose voice was the voice of God. Abbé Rosemonde whispered a few last words in Aurore's ears. He placed his hand in reverent benediction upon her head. André stood by, obviously impatient. His friends pressed round him and tried to grasp his hand. The women wept, why they knew not. Through the coloured window glass the dawn was creeping in, and the tallow candles on the altar flickered more and more dimly.

"You will be kind to her, André," were the last words the good priest spoke before he left the sanctuary.

André gave an impatient shrug.

"Come, ma mie," he said Curtly, and with his habitual peremptory gesture he put his arm round Aurore's waist and led her out of the church.

The waning moon was nothing now but a half circle of filmy white vapour. Out in the east a July dawn had already set the fires of heaven alight. The horizon was aglow with crimson and gold, with emerald and chrysoprase, and tiny fleecy clouds, blood red and splendent, lay like streaks of flame across the sky.