"Oh Clara, my darling, these superstitious feelings are very sad!" he remonstrated. "You ought not to indulge them."
"Will you tell me how I could have avoided them? It was not my fault that the dream came to me: or that the eyes of the driver were her eyes: or that my death had been induced through going to Mrs. Chester's. Both you and Mrs. Chester seemed to help me on to it in my dream: and as surely as the man appeared to drive me to the grave in the hearse, so has she driven me to it in reality. I wrote out the dream in full at the time, and you will find the paper in my desk. Read it over when I am gone, and reflect how completely it has been fulfilled."
He was silent. A nasty feeling of superstition was beginning to creep over himself.
"Will you let me ask you something?" she whispered, presently.
He bent his tearful face down upon hers. "Ask me anything."
"When--I--am--no longer here, shall you marry her?"
Robert Lake darted up with a tremendous word, almost flinging his wife's face from him. His anger bubbled over for a few moments: not at his wife's question, but at the idea it suggested. For remorse was very strong upon him then; the image of Lady Ellis in consequence distasteful.
"Mary her! Her! I would rather take a pistol, and shoot myself through the heart--and--sin that it implies--I assert it before my Maker."
Clara gave utterance to a faint sigh of relief, and unclasped her arms. "Then you do not love her as you have loved me?"
He flung himself on his knees before her, and sobbed aloud in his repentant anguish. She leaned over him endearingly, stroking his face and his hair.