“Did she say anything,” I asked, “when she recovered her senses?”
“Yes. She too had been dreaming—dreaming that she was in company with you. She said: ‘He is coming to see us, mamma; and I have been showing him the way.’ I asked her where she had seen you. She spoke confusedly of more places than one. She talked of trees, and a cottage, and a lake; then of fields and hedges, and lonely lanes; then of a carriage and horses, and a long white road; then of crowded streets and houses, and a river and a ship. As to these last objects, there is nothing very wonderful in what she said. The houses, the river, and the ship which she saw in her dream, she saw in the reality when we took her from London to Rotterdam, on our way here. But as to the other places, especially the cottage and the lake (as she described them) I can only suppose that her dream was the reflection of mine. I had been dreaming of the cottage and the lake, as I once knew them in years long gone by; and—Heaven only knows why—I had associated you with the scene. Never mind going into that now! I don’t know what infatuation it is that makes me trifle in this way with old recollections, which affect me painfully in my present position. We were talking of the child’s health; let us go back to that.”
It was not easy to return to the topic of her child’s health. She had revived my curiosity on the subject of her association with Greenwater Broad. The child was still quietly at play in the bedchamber. My second opportunity was before me. I took it.
“I won’t distress you,” I began. “I will only ask leave, before we change the subject, to put one question to you about the cottage and the lake.”
As the fatality that pursued us willed it, it was her turn now to be innocently an obstacle in the way of our discovering each other.
“I can tell you nothing more to-night,” she interposed, rising impatiently. “It is time I put the child to bed—and, besides, I can’t talk of things that distress me. You must wait for the time—if it ever comes!—when I am calmer and happier than I am now.”
She turned to enter the bed-chamber. Acting headlong on the impulse of the moment, I took her by the hand and stopped her.
“You have only to choose,” I said, “and the calmer and happier time is yours from this moment.”
“Mine?” she repeated. “What do you mean?”
“Say the word,” I replied, “and you and your child have a home and a future before you.”