“A ‘Bradshaw?’ What on earth do you want with ‘Bradshaw?’” says my hostess, her face lengthening considerably and a slight tincture of natural coldness coming into her tone.
“I know it seems rude—insultingly rude,” say I, still holding her hand and speaking almost lachrymosely: “but do you know, my dear, I really am afraid that—that—I shall have to leave you—to-day?”
“To leave us?” repeats she, withdrawing her hand and growing angrily red. “What! when not twenty-four hours ago you settled to stay a month with us? What have we done between then and now to disgust you with us?”
“Nothing—nothing,” cry I, eagerly; “how can you suggest such a thing? I never had a kinder welcome nor ever saw a place that charmed me more; but—but——”
“But what?” asks Jane, her colour subsiding and looking a little mollified.
“It is best to tell the truth, I suppose,” say I, sighing, “even though I know that you will laugh at me—will call me vapourish—sottishly superstitious; but I had an awful and hideous dream last night.”
“Is that all?” she says, looking relieved, and beginning to arrange her roses in an old china bowl. “And do you think that all dreams are confined to this house? I never heard before of their affecting any one special place more than another. Perhaps no sooner are you back in Dublin, in your own room and your own bed, than you will have a still worse and uglier one.”
I shake my head. “But it was about this house—about you.”
“About me?” she says, with an accent of a little aroused interest.
“About you and your husband,” I answer earnestly. “Shall I tell it you? Whether you say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ I must. Perhaps it came as a warning; such things have happened. Yes, say what you will, I cannot believe that any vision so consistent—so tangibly real and utterly free from the jumbled incongruities and unlikelinesses of ordinary dreams—could have meant nothing. Shall I begin?”