[CHAPTER LIX.--"A DREAM WHICH WAS NOT ALL A DREAM."]
Brief though my nap of "forty winks," I had within it a little dream, induced, no doubt, by my return to Wales, and by my surroundings, as it was of Winifred Lloyd, of past tenderness, and our old kind, flirting, cousinly intercourse, before others came between us; for Winifred had ever been as a sister to me, and dearer, perhaps. Now I thought she was hanging over me with much of sorrowful yearning in her soft face, and saying,
"Papa will not be here for an hour, perhaps, and for that hour I may have him all to myself, to watch. Poor Harry, so bruised, so battered, and so ill-used by those odious wretches!"
Her lips were parted; her breath came in short gasps.
Was it imagination or reality that a kiss or a tress of her hair touched my cheek so lightly? There was certainly a tear, too!
I started and awoke fully, to see her I dreamt of standing at the side of my chair, with one hand resting on it, while her soft eyes regarded me sadly, earnestly, and--there is no use evading it--lovingly. She wore her blue riding-habit, her skirt gathered in the hand which held her switch and buff gauntlets; and though her fine hair was beautifully dressed under her riding-hat, one tress was loose.
"Dear Winifred, my appearance does not shock you, I hope?" said I, clasping her hand tenderly, and perhaps with some of that energy peculiar to those who have but one.
"Thank Heaven, it is no worse!" she replied; "but, poor Harry Hardinge, an arm is a serious loss."
"Yet I might have come home, like Le Diable Boiteux, on two wooden stumps, as Dora once half predicted; but even as it is, my round-dancing is at an end now. By the way, I have a sorrowful message for you."
"Then I don't want to hear it. But from whom?"