“I don’t believe in them a bit,” he said, lifting himself into a sitting position, and addressing himself to her with increasing earnestness, “not now that I have you here safe within reach of my hand—so,” taking her hand in his, and keeping it clasped in both his own; “but I had a dream about you in Burmah, which kept me in a fever of anxiety for nearly a month. I should have telegraphed to ask if all was right with you, only I told myself that if anything was wrong Tabitha would instantly telegraph to me. I made her promise that before I left England. It was almost my last injunction. And to think that she left you half a year ago, and that anything might have happened to you after that, and that there was no one—no one——”
“But, you see, I am quite safe. There was no bad news to send you. Besides, if I had been ill, or anything had gone wrong, there was Mrs. Baynham. She has been like a mother to me. I am so sorry you feel vexed about Tabitha’s leaving me.”
“Doubly vexed, dear, because you left me in ignorance of the fact.”
“Pray don’t be angry with me, Martin, so soon,” she pleaded meekly.
“Angry, no. I am not angry. I don’t know how to be angry with you, Isola; but I can’t help being distressed. However, let the past be past. I shall never leave you to the care of strangers again till I die.”
Her only answer was to bend her head down to kiss the hands that clasped her own.
“Tell me about your dream,” she said, after a pause, with her forehead still resting on his hands, and her face hidden. “Was it something very awful?”
“It was all confusion—a wild chaos—a nightmare of strange sounds and sensations—tempest, fire, earthquake—I know not what—but it meant deadly danger for you—death perhaps. I saw you hanging in space—a white figure, with piteous, pain-wrought face. Never have I seen you look like that—your eyes staring wildly as if they were looking at death; your features drawn and rigid, and through all the confusion, and noise, and ceaseless movement, I was trying to follow you—trying, but impotently—to save you. The white figure was always before me—far off—yet visible every now and then across the darkness of a world where everything was shapeless and confused. But the worst of all was that every now and then a black wall rose up between your distant figure and the stony difficult path that I was treading—a wall against which I flung myself, mad with rage and despair, trying to tear the stones asunder with my hands, till the blood ran in streams from my fingers. It was a dream that seemed to last through a long night, holding in it the memory of a painful past; yet I suppose it was like other dreams—momentary, for I had heard three o’clock strike before I fell asleep, and when I sounded my repeater it was only a quarter past.”
“Rather a meaningless dream,” she said, in a sleepy voice, without looking up. “I don’t think it ought to have alarmed you.”