The prince also signed his name, and then kissed her on the forehead.

The clergyman also shook hands and it was all over.

She understood that she had been married by a special license, and that she was now legally and irretrievably the wife of Amede Henri, Prince d’Orleans, de Bourgogne and several other places and dependencies abroad.

She also understood from what the bald-headed clergyman had spoken when he stood before them in the church and read the marriage service that she as the wife owed obedience to her husband in all things, for she had solemnly sworn so to do.  She herself, body and soul and mind, her goods and chattels, her wealth and all belongings were from henceforth the property of her husband.

Yes, she had sworn to all that, willingly, and there was no going back on that, now or ever!

But, oh! how she wished it had been different!

Afterwards, when in the privacy of her own little room at Acol Court, she thought over the whole of that long and dismal day, she oft found herself wondering what it was through it all that had seemed so terrifying to her, so strange, so unreal.

Something had struck her as weird:  something which she could not then define; but she was quite sure that it was not merely the unusual chilliness of that rainy summer’s day, which had caused her to tremble so, when—­in the vestry—­her husband had taken her hand and kissed her.

She had then looked into his face, which—­though the vestry was but ill lighted by a tiny very dusty window—­she had never seen quite so clearly before, and then it was that that amazing sense of something awful and unreal had descended upon her like a clammy shroud.

He had very swiftly averted his own gaze from her, but she had seen something in his face which she did not understand, over which she had pondered ever since without coming to any solution of this terrible riddle.

She had pondered over it during that interminable journey back from Dover to Acol.  Her husband had not even suggested accompanying her on her homeward way, nor did she ask him to do so.  She did not even think it strange that he gave her no explanation of the reason why he should not return to his lodgings at Acol.  She felt like a somnambulist, and wondered how soon she would wake and find herself in her small and uncomfortable bed at the Court.

The next day that feeling of unreality was still there; that sensation of mystery, of something supernatural which persistently haunted her.

One thing was quite sure; that all joy had gone out of her life.  It was possible that love was still there—­she did not know—­she was too young to understand the complex sensations which suddenly had made a woman of her ... but it was a joyless love now:  and all that she knew of a certainty about her own feelings at the present was that she hoped she would never have to gaze into her lover’s face again ... and ...  Heaven help her! ... that he might never touch her again with his lips.