"Were you quite unconscious on that occasion?" I asked quickly, "or were you aware, in a hazy manner, of what was going on around you, as you were last night?" A wild hope sprang up in my heart. Was it possible that she would reveal to me her secret? "I think," she answered, "that my condition then was very similar to that of last night; I recollect quite well being unable to move my limbs or to lift a finger. Every muscle seemed paralysed, while, at the same time, I went as cold as ice, just as though I were frozen to death. Indeed, a horrible dread took possession of me lest my friends should allow me to be buried alive." "You were in a kind of cataleptic state," I remarked. "Who were these friends?" Her great eyes were lifted. They were full of depths unfathomable even to my intense love. "I was practically unconscious, therefore I do not know who was present; I only heard voices." "Of whom?" "Of men talking." "Could you not recognise them?" "No," she answered, in a low tone; "they were dream-voices, strange and weird--sounding afar off." "What did they say?" "I cannot tell, only I recollect that I thought I was in church; I had a curious dream." Again she hesitated. Her voice had suddenly fallen so that I could scarcely make out the sound of the last word. "What did you dream? The vagaries of the brain sometimes give us a clue to the nature of such seizures." "I dreamed that I was wedded," she responded, in a low, unnatural voice. The next instant she seemed to realise what she had said. With a start of terror she drew herself away from me. "Wedded? To whom?" "I do not know," she replied, with a queer laugh. "Of course, it was a mere dream; I saw no one." "But you heard voices?" "They were so distorted as to be indistinguishable," she replied readily. "Are you absolutely certain that the marriage was only a dream?" I asked, looking her straight in the face. A flash of indignant surprise passed across her features, now pale as marble; her lips were slightly parted, her large full eyes were fixed upon me steadfastly, and her fingers pressed themselves into the palms of her hands. "I don't understand you, Doctor!" she said at length, after a pause of the most awkward duration. "Of course I am not married?" "I regret if you take my words as an insinuation," I said hastily. "It was a kind of dream," she declared. "Indeed, I think that I was in a sort of delirium and imagined it all, for when I recovered completely I found myself here, in my own room, with Nora at my side." "And where were you when you were taken ill?" "In the house of a friend." "May I not know the name?" I inquired. "It is a name with which you are not acquainted," she assured me. "The house at which I was visiting was in Queen's-gate Gardens." Queen's-gate Gardens! Then she was telling the truth! "And you have no knowledge of how you came to be back here in your cousin's house?"