"I don't exactly think it, James. Think is not the right word. The feeling has come upon me again within the last few weeks, and I cannot shake it off. I believe it to be a presentiment; a warning."
Paler and paler grew Mr. Chattaway. He did not understand. Like Miss Diana Trevlyn, he was very matter-of-fact, comprehending nothing but what could be seen and felt; and his wife might as well have spoken in an unknown tongue as of "presentiments." He drew a rapid conclusion that some unpleasant fact, bearing upon the dread he had long felt, must have come to his wife's knowledge.
"What have you heard?" he gasped.
"I have heard nothing; nothing whatever. I——"
"Then what on earth are you talking about?"
"Did you understand me, James? I say the impression was once firmly seated in my mind that Rupert would somehow be restored to what—to what"—she scarcely knew how to frame her words with the delicacy she deemed due to her husband's feelings—"to what would have been his but for his father's death. And that impression has now returned to me."
"But you have not heard anything? Any plot?—any conspiracy that's being hatched against us?"
"No, no."
Mr. Chattaway stared searchingly at his wife. Did he fancy, as Miss Diana had done, that her intellect was becoming disordered?
"Then, what do you mean?" he asked, after a pause. "Why should such an idea arise?"