"Cecil! so it is you. Now, gentlemen, you will be able to see if I lied. These gentlemen, Cecil, are friends of yours, not of mine. _I_ have never seen them before to-night. You appear to have offended them. They have been endeavouring to visit your offence on me. I cannot congratulate you on your acquaintance. That little scoundrel there, who appears to be an Italian bravo, has a knife in one pocket, and a revolver in the other. He would have murdered me if you had delayed your appearance on the scene." "Bah!" Again the little man's shoulders went up to his ears. "It was but a little game." "And was this a little game?" Hubert snatched up the paper, the unsigned promise of marriage, from the table on which it was lying; he held it out in front of him. The big man, in his turn, snatched it from his grasp. He tore it into minute shreds. While Hubert still was staring, a lady advanced. It was Angel. "So, all the time you were amusing yourself at my expense. You are a charming person. Where are my thirty pounds?" Hubert was not at all embarrassed. He twirled his moustache. "Cecil, this lady appears to be a friend of yours. Where are her thirty pounds?" Cecil stepped up to him. "What confounded tricks have you been up to?" Hubert's air of injured innocence was, in its way, superb. "Cecil, this is too much; too much! In mistake for you I have been insulted, all but murdered, and all"--he turned to the assembled company--"and all, upon my word of honour, because I was so unfortunate as to have been born a twin." A VISION OF THE NIGHT. CHAPTER I. ASLEEP. "Charlie, do you believe in dreams?" It was in the great hall of the Pouhon spring at Spa. The band was playing. The motley crowd which gathers in the season at Spa to drink, or not to drink, the waters, were talking, smoking, drinking coffee, something stronger, looking at the papers, or listening to the music. Among the crowd were Gerald Lovell and his friend Charles Warren. At the particular moment in which Mr. Lovell put his question, Mr. Warren was puffing rings of cigarette smoke into the air. "Ask me," he said, with distinct irreverence, "another." "A queer thing happened to me last night." "If you have any malicious intention of inflicting on me a dream, young man, there'll be a row. I have an aunt who dreams. She's a dreaming sort. She's always dreaming. And she tells her dreams--such dreams! Ye Goths! At the mere mention of the word 'dreams' the nightmare figure of my aunt rises to my mind's eye. So beware." "But I'm not sure that this was a dream. Anyhow, just listen." "If I must!" said Mr. Warren. And he sighed. "I dreamt that a woman kissed me!" "If I could only dream such a thing. Some men have all the luck."