"Nothing," replied Lady Doris, "but that I did not sleep well. I had a most unpleasant dream."
"What was it?" asked the countess.
"About Italy—about some one I knew, I saw there. Only a foolish dream, and I am foolish to mention it."
"Of all people in the world, you are the last I ever should have imagined to know what being nervous meant."
"I am not nervous," replied Lady Doris, quickly. "It would annoy me very much to hear any one say so."
But though she indignantly denied the fact as being a very discreditable one, she looked pale, and the laughing eyes had lost something of their brightness. She started at every sound; and once, when a violent peal from the bell sounded through the house, Lady Linleigh saw that she dropped the book she was holding.
Much did the countess wonder what had affected her fair young daughter. Yet it was such a trifle, such a foolish dream that had caused her to stop for one moment in her career of triumph, and look at the possible dangers in store for her.
She dreamed that she was walking in a pretty wood near Florence, when suddenly the tall trees began to assume the most grotesque shapes; huge branches became long arms, all trying to grasp her, leaves became fingers trying to detain her. No sooner had she eluded the clutch of one giant arm than another was stretched out toward her. In vain she tried to elude them. Then she heard her own name called out in a voice which, with a strange thrill of fear, she recognized as Lord Vivianne's. Then she saw him standing underneath one of the giant arms, and he held a long, shining knife in his hands.
"I have been looking for you for some time," he said; "now that I have found you, I mean to kill you, because you were faithless to me."
She tried to escape, but the giant arms clutched her, the fingers clasped round her, the shining steel flashed before her eyes, and she awoke—awoke to feel such fear as she had never before known.