'No-o, not exactly bad, but very strange. Do you know—I found—my travelling hat and cloak—lying about—and I wondered whether—in my sleep—I had put them on—thinking I was—going back to London!'
All this, uttered very slowly and with much hesitation, I listened to without interruption, and then, standing up with my back to the fire, nodded to her reassuringly.
'Well, so you did, Mrs. Scott, and a nice fright your sleep-walking propensities gave me, I can tell you. It was by the luckiest chance in the world that I didn't brain you with the poker for a burglar when I heard footsteps in the hall in the middle of the night!'
'You did!' cried she, pale to the lips with apprehension.
'Yes; and when I saw you, you muttered something I couldn't understand, and then you half woke up, and you went back quickly to your room again, leaving me considerably wider awake than before.'
'Is that all?' asked Babiole, the faint colour coming back to her face again.
'It was quite enough for me, I assure you. And I hope you will take your walking exercise for the future in the daytime, when my elderly nerves are at their best.'
Babiole laughed, much relieved. She evidently retained such a vivid impression of the thoughts which had preyed upon her excited mind on the previous evening that she was tormented by the fear or the dim remembrance of having given them expression. She now looked with awakening interest at the odd collection on the table.
'Are you making preparations for a fancy bazaar, Mr. Maude?' she asked, taking up a case which contained a gold thimble.
But she knew what the exhibition meant, and she was glad, though neither of us looked at the other as she put this question, and I made my answer.