“Is it you,” she said at length, “or another dream?”
“It is I, Beatrice!” he answered, amazed.
She recovered herself with an effort.
“Then why did you frighten me so?” she asked. “It was unkind—oh, I did not mean to say anything cross. What did I say? I forget. I am so glad that you have come!” and she put her hand to her forehead and looked at him again as one might gaze at a ghost from the grave.
“Did you not expect me?” Geoffrey asked.
“Expect you? no. No more than I expected——” and she stopped suddenly.
“It is very odd,” he said; “I thought you knew that your father was going to ask me down. I returned from London with him.”
“From London,” she murmured. “I did not know; Elizabeth did not tell me anything about it. I suppose that she forgot.”
“Here I am at any rate, and how are you?”
“Oh, well now, quite well. There, I am all right again. It is very wrong to frighten people in that way, Mr. Bingham,” she added in her usual voice. “Let me pass through the gate and I will shake hands with you—if,” she added, in a tone of gentle mockery, “one may shake hands with so great a man. But I told you how it would be, did I not, just before we were drowned together, you know? How is Effie?”