"Ah! you do not know everything," she answered. "Every night I have such terrible dreams that I have come to dread going to bed."
I thought of my own dream on the previous night, and could well understand how she felt. After her last remark she was silent for some moments. That there was something still to come, I could see, but what it was I had no more idea than a child. At last she spoke.
"Sir Richard," she said, "would you mind very much if I were to ask you a most important question? I scarcely like to do so, but I know that you are my friend, and that you will give me good advice."
"I will endeavour to do so," I replied. "What is the question you wish to ask me?"
"It is about my engagement," she replied. "You know how good and unselfish the Duke is, and how truly he believes in me. I could not bear to bring trouble upon him, but in love there should be no secrets—nothing should be hidden one from the other. Yet I feel that I am hiding so much—can you understand what I mean?"
"In a great measure," I answered, "but I should like to do so thoroughly. Miss Gertrude, if I may hazard a guess, I should say that you have been dreaming about Doctor Nikola again?"
"Yes," she answered after a moment's hesitation. "Absurd though it may be, I can think of no one else. He weighs upon my spirits like lead, and yet I know that I should be grateful to him for all he did for me when I was so ill. But for him I should not be alive now."
"I am afraid that you have been allowing the thought of your recent danger to lie too heavily upon your mind," I continued. "Remember that this is the nineteenth century, and that there are no such things as you think Nikola would have you believe."
"When I know that there are?" she asked, looking at me reproachfully. "Ah, Sir Richard," she continued, "if you knew all that I do you would pity me. But no one will ever know, and I cannot tell them. But one thing is quite certain. I must stay in Venice for the present—happen what may. Something tells me so, day and night. And when I think of the Duke my heart well-nigh breaks for fear I should bring trouble upon him."
I did my best to comfort her; promised that if she really desired to remain in Venice I would arrange it for her, and by so doing committed myself to a policy that I very well knew, when I came to consider it later, was not expedient, and very far from being judicious. Regarded seriously in a sober commonplace light, the whole affair seems too absurd, and yet at the time nothing could possibly have been more real or earnest. When she had heard me out, she thanked me very prettily for the interest I had taken, and then with a little sigh, that went to my heart, left the room. Later in the afternoon I broke the news to my wife, and told her of the promise I had given Gertrude.