"I may be a little overtired," she said, in answer to his anxious question, "and I am somehow depressed—oddly depressed. We have been so gay and happy these last few days, that I can hardly bear to feel myself going down to a lower level. I feel a great longing for your father to be with me. Philip, do you ever feel as if you had been in some place before, even if you knew for certain that you never can have been there?"
"I have felt it once," he replied.
"I feel it here," she continued, sighing; "I feel it very strongly. I feel, too, as if your father had been here; of course that is possible, though he never mentioned it to me. It seems almost as if I could see him passing to and fro, and sitting here by my side, just as you are sitting. And I have another sensation—as if for years I had been traveling unconsciously toward one spot, and it is here, this valley, this room. You know I am not superstitious, but if I cannot shake off this feeling, we must go on somewhere else. It is foolish of me, but I cannot stay here. I am positively afraid of going to bed, for I shall not sleep. Look at that great bed in the corner; it frightens me. Yet I never am afraid."
"You are overdone, mother," he said tenderly. "I have not taken care of you, but left myself to be taken care of. Let Dorothy come and sleep with you; you would not be afraid with her sweet, happy face beside you."
"It is sweet and happy," answered Margaret, with a smile. "Yes, I will have a bed made up for her here, and if I lie awake in the night I can look across at her, sleeping as if she felt herself under the shadow of God's wings."
"Ah, mother!" he cried, "if you only loved my Phyllis as you love Dorothy!"
"I may do some day," she replied. "When she is your wife and my daughter-in-law, she will be nearer to me even than Dorothy."
He put his arm round her and kissed her gratefully, but in silence. He knew that she could never love Phyllis as she loved Dorothy. Phyllis, with her little petulancies, her pretty maneuvers, her arch plottings to get her own way, her love of ornament and display, all her pleasures and her purposes, was too unlike Margaret ever to become the daughter of her heart. But he must make up to Phyllis by a deeper devotion, a more single attention to her wishes, even when they were opposed to his own. Marrying her against the will and judgment of his father and mother, he must make it evident to her, as well as to them, that he never regretted acting on his own decision.
"I am going up the mountains to-morrow morning," he said before leaving her, "with a priest, to hear some great secret from an old woman who is dying. Some tale of robbery, I expect. We start at six, and it is two hours' up the mountain; but I shall get back for twelve o'clock breakfast."
The clock in the bell tower struck twelve before Margaret could resolve upon lying down in the great square bed in the corner, which stood almost as high as her own head. Dorothy had been fast asleep for some time on the little bed that had been moved into the room, and the girl's sweet, tranquil slumber in some measure dispelled her own nervous fears. But the night was sleepless to her. She heard, every quarter of an hour, the loud, single boom of the great bell, which reassured the inhabitants of the valley that their watchman was awake on his chilly tower, and looking out for any cause of alarm. Was it possible that she had never listened to it before, so familiar the sound was? Could this be the first night she had lain awake in this weary chamber, longing for Sidney's presence, and watching with weary eyes the gray light of the morning stealing through the chinks of the shutters? Had she never wept before as she did now, with tears slowly forcing themselves beneath her heavy eyelids? It was all a nervous illusion, she told herself, proceeding from overstrain and fatigue; but if it continued through the day, she must go on to some other place. There would be no chance of rest for her here.