“A dream!” she said. “I am such a believer in dreams, Mr. Eyrle—tell me yours.”
“It is not fit for a bright May morning,” he said; “it is full of horror.”
“And you are brooding over it until you are making yourself quite ill,” said Lady Alden. “Now, Mr. Eyrle, be advised; never nurse a sorrow; tell Sir Ronald, if you do not trust me, what has distressed you. He will explain your dream away.”
Neither Lady Hermione, intent on comforting, nor Kenelm, wrapped in gloomy thoughts, noticed how Sir Ronald had drawn the little ones to him, as though to seek hope and shelter.
“Ronald, you have greater powers of persuasion than have fallen to my lot,” said Lady Alden. “Try to cheer Mr. Eyrle.”
Kenelm raised his eyes. She saw that they were heavy with unshed tears.
“I am like Banquo’s ghost,” he said. “I only bring gloom to you. My dream was of my lost love, Lady Alden, and you are right in thinking it haunts me. I ought to beg your pardon for speaking of gloomy subjects that must be distasteful to you, but it seems a strange thing that whenever I sleep or visit here, I dream of Clarice.”
Lady Hermione’s face grew even more beautiful in its softened tenderness and compassion.
“It is not strange,” she replied, gently, “you loved her so dearly, and Aldenmere is filled with memories of her. Tell us your dream.”
“I dreamed,” he replied, “that she came to the door of my room, opened it, and stood there, just as I saw her last, her white dress covered with flowers. She called me by my name, ‘Kenelm—Kenelm Eyrle!’ The dream was so weird, Lady Alden, I thought, at first, she was really there. Then I remembered she was dead, and my heart began to beat strangely. ‘Kenelm,’ she said, ‘you are sleeping quietly here at Aldenmere, and I lie in my grave unavenged!’ I cried out to her that my life was spent in the vain effort to trace her murderers and bring them to justice. ‘Yet you sleep!’ she said, sadly, and the next moment she had disappeared. Lady Alden, all the description that ever I could give would never tell you how those words touched me. I have heard the saddest notes from an æolian harp, but they were not so sad as the voice which said to me: ‘Yet you sleep!’ Oh, Lady Alden, pardon me; I cannot bear even to remember it,” and, abruptly enough, Kenelm Eyrle rose and quitted the breakfast-room, leaving Sir Ronald and Lady Hermione looking anxiously at each other.