"A very strange one," answered Lord Gowrie, and fell into a fit of thought. His meditations, however, were less of Julia's dream than of what his own conduct ought to be. He felt unwilling to alarm her, or to create any doubts or suspicions in her bosom as to the course before them; but yet her frank confidence required return; and he felt that after she had told him all, he ought to withhold from her nothing.
In the meantime she rode on by his side, with the tresses of her glossy hair somewhat shaken by the exercise, falling here and there on her beautiful face. The dark eyes were bent down with the long eyelashes resting on her cheek, as if she would not interrupt his meditations by a look; but at length the earl said, "This is a strange dream, indeed, dear Julia; and the occurrence is the more strange, inasmuch as something very similar happened to me last night also."
Julia started, and looked up. "Oh, what?" she exclaimed.
"The selfsame person appeared to me likewise," replied her lover. "I know him well by your description, too accurate to be mistaken; but that which is perhaps the most strange of all is, that to me he appeared as I have never seen him represented, but as I have heard him described, and to you, who have neither seen him nor his picture, exactly as his portrait stands in my gallery at Perth."
"But what did he say to you? What was the import of your dream?" asked Julia.
"I am not so certain it was a dream," replied Lord Gowrie; "would that I were; but his warning to me was very similar to that addressed to yourself. You have told me all, dear Julia, and I must not withhold anything from you; but still, while speaking with perfect confidence to each other, we must not let anything like superstitious fears affect our conduct or turn us from our course. Your heart and mine, dear girl, are inseparably linked for weal and woe. God grant, for thy sake, that the happiness may predominate; but I feel that neither could know what happiness is were we ever to part."
"Oh, no, no!" murmured Julia, in a low tone, letting the reins fall upon her horse's neck, and clasping her hands together, while her head bowed down as if something oppressed her almost to fainting--"Oh, no, no! That hour were death."
Gowrie soothed her by assurances of eternal love, and then proceeded to tell her all that had occurred to him during the preceding night. He spoke of it, too, as of a delusion of the imagination; but Julia fell into thought which lasted several minutes after he had done. At length she looked up with a brighter glance. "If you remember," she said, "the night before last we were looking over together those papers concerning my birth, and we spoke much of my father and your ancestor who slew the unhappy Rizzio. The subject rested long in my mind; and perhaps on you also it had no slight effect. Do you not think, Gowrie, that in passing through the scenes we have lately traversed, with things exciting the imagination at every step, weary and exhausted too, fancy was likely to reproduce for us, in sleepy or drowsy hours, the phantoms which had haunted us throughout the day?"
"Perhaps so," answered her lover, glad to catch at any solution of a mystery so dark and painful--"perhaps so, my Julia; and yet these dreams are very like realities sometimes. The people in my land--in our land--are given much to superstition, and I would far rather imagine that I had yielded to those impressions implanted in us during youth, than believe that such a warning should in our case be requisite or given."
"But do you believe, Gowrie, that such a thing is now permitted as that the spirits of the dead should revisit earth in the forms which they bore while living?" Julia asked, gravely, and then added, "he who was my instructor from my earliest years had no faith in such events."