Suddenly she seemed to shiver in her sleep, and to mutter, as terror and sorrow hardened the lines of her face. She was dreaming; and starting with a low cry, she awoke, and sprang almost into the arms of Chute. Her lips were white and parched--white as the teeth within them; her eyes, with a wild, hysterical, and overstrained expression, were fixed on the empty air, while the veins in her delicate throat were swollen; and then she turned to Chute, who kissed her forehead, caressed her hands, and besought her to be calm. She drew a long, gasping sigh, and said, while swaying forward, as if about to fall: 'Oh, Trevor, Trevor! I have had a dream of Beverley--and such a dream! Hold me up, or I shall fall!' she added, pressing her tremulous hands upon her thin white temples. 'In this dream, Beverley said--said----' Tears choked her utterance. '_What_ did you think he said?' asked Chute, tenderly. 'Think? I heard him as plainly as I hear you!' 'Well, do speak, Ida.' 'He said, "We are never to be parted, Ida, even by death. Fate has linked my soul to yours for ever; and though unseen, I am ever near you." Then a cry escaped me, and I awoke. Had you not been here, I should have fainted.' 'This is--heavens! what shall I call it--morbid!' exclaimed Chute. 'Such dreams----' 'Come to me unbidden--uncontrolled,' continued Ida, sobbing heavily. 'There seems to be a strange, half sad and sweet, half fearful and subtle, influence at work around me! I am sure that there is a world beyond the grave--an unseen world that is close, close to us all, Trevor.' As she spoke, Chute, who was regarding her with the tenderest sympathy, became deeply pained to see the grey, death-like hue that stole over her lovely face, and the droop that came into her--for the moment--lustreless eyes; and as he gazed he almost began to imbibe some of her wild convictions. 'It is a matter of knowledge,' says a writer, 'that there are persons whose yearning conceptions--nay, travelled conclusions--continually take the form of images which have a foreshadowing power: the deed they do starts up before them in complete shape, making a coercive type; the event they hunger for or dread rises into vision with a seed-like growth, feeding itself fast on unnumbered impressions. They are not always the less capable of argumentative process, nor less sane than the commonplace calculators of the market.' 'Whenever I _think_ of Beverley, I seem to feel that he is, unseen, beside me; and this startling and oppressive emotion I can neither control, analyze, or conquer,' said Ida, wearily, as Chute led her to another room. CHAPTER XXI. CHRISTMAS EVE. It was not in the heart of honest Jerry Vane to harbour much of doubt when pity was wanted; and, so far as Ida was concerned, it fully seemed wanted now.