Another dreary interval, and then for the third time came Sarah bearing a tray.

“Your supper, miss.” said Sarah, going through the formula.  “I hope you liked your dinner.”

“Oh, take it away!” cried Millie, twisting her fingers.  “I don’t want any supper—­I’m going crazy, I think!  Oh, what a hard, flinty, unfeeling heart you must have, you wicked young woman!”

Sarah looked at her compassionately.

“It is hard, I know.  But why didn’t you do as master wished you, and get away?”

“Marry him!  How dare you?  I wish I could poison him!  I’d do that with the greatest pleasure.”

“Then you must stay here, miss, for weeks and weeks, months and months, and every day be like this.  Your friends will never find you—­never!”

“Sarah, look here!  I shall be dead in a week, and I’ll haunt you—­I vow I will!  I’ll haunt you until I make your life a misery to you!”

Sarah smiled quietly.

“I am not afraid, miss.  You’re a great deal too young and too healthy to die; and you won’t kill yourself, for life is too sweet, even in prison.  The best thing you can do is to marry master, and be restored to your friends.”

“Sarah Grant—­if that be your name,” said Mollie, with awful calmness—­“go away! if you only come here to insult me like that, don’t come here at all.”

Sarah courtesied respectfully, and immediately left.  But her words had made their mark.  In spite of Mollie’s appealing dignity, any avenue of escape—­even that—­was beginning to took inviting.

“Suppose I went through the form of a ceremony with this man?” mused Mollie.  “It wouldn’t mean anything, you know, because I did it upon compulsion; and, immediately I got out, I should go straight and marry Sir Roger.  But I won’t do it—­of course, I won’t!  I’ll be imprisoned forever before I yield!”

But you know it has got to be a proverb, “When a woman hesitates, she is lost.”  Mollie had begun to hesitate, and Mollie was lost.

All that long night she never slept a wink.  She lay awake, tossing and tumbling on the bed, or pacing up and down the floor, in a sort of delirious fever.  And—­

“If I thought for certain sure he would let me go after the sham ceremony was performed, I would marry him,” was the conclusion she had arrived at by morning.  “No matter what happens, nothing can be half so bad as this.”

It was morning, though Mollie did not know it, when she threw herself on the bed, and for the second time fell asleep.  And sleeping, she dreamed.  She was standing up before the minister, to be married to the masked man.  The ceremony went on—­Miriam was bride-maid and Sir Roger Trajenna gave her away.  The ceremony ended, the bridegroom turned to salute the bride.  “But first I must remove my mask,” he said, in a strangely familiar voice; and lifting it off, Mollie saw smiling down upon her the most beautiful face ever mortal were, familiar as the voice, yet leaving her equally unable to place it.