It was curious. I asked la bella Carolina, the pretty little one, Was mistress unwell? No. Out of spirits? No. Fearful of bad roads, or brigands? No. And what made it more mysterious was, the pretty little one would not look at me in giving answer, but would look at the view.
But, one day she told me the secret.
“If you must know,” said Carolina, “I find, from what I have overheard, that mistress is haunted.”
“How haunted?”
“By a dream.”
“What dream?”
“By a dream of a face. For three nights before her marriage, she saw a face in a dream—always the same face, and only One.”
“A terrible face?”
“No. The face of a dark, remarkable-looking man, in black, with black hair and a gray mustache—a handsome man, except for a reserved and secret air. Not a face she ever saw, or at all like a face she ever saw. Doing nothing in the dream but looking at her fixedly, out of darkness.”
“Does the dream come back?”