“Just in the nick of time!” echoed Floy; and she added, in a murmur, to herself: “Oh, that blessed dream that sent him to save me!”
He caught the whisper, and repeated, joyously:
“Yes, that blessed dream, for Heaven must have sent it to my pillow, forewarning me in dreams of your peril, that I might hasten to save you. But, Floy—forgive me for calling you that so boldly, but it seems so natural—-how strange it seems that you could follow my dream in thoughts as you did. You must possess the gift of mind-reading.”
“No,” she answered, hesitatingly, then burst out, solemnly: “Oh, it’s so strange I can hardly tell you, and perhaps you will not believe me, but—I knew all your dream as soon as you began to relate it. For—this is the truth, sir, and not a girlish jest—to-night I fell asleep on the porch of Suicide Place before I came into the house, and dreamed the self-same dream just as you have told it, word for word.”
She paused, awed and trembling, overcome by the strange coincidence of her dream.
She heard St. George Beresford laugh low and joyously to himself; she felt him crush the hand he held against his throbbing heart, then he whispered, tenderly:
“Oh, happy, happy dream that brought us together! Let me interpret it, darling little Floy. It means that we indeed are lovers, that Heaven made us for each other. Do you not believe it?”
CHAPTER XI.
PLIGHTED.
What Floy would have answered to her lover’s ardent question was lost in the rumble and noise of the carriage wheels as the driver reined up his horses in front of Bird’s Nest Cottage, and loudly announced: