"None whatever. I tell you that I was entirely unconscious."
"And you are certain that the symptoms on that day were the same as
those which we all experienced last night? You felt frozen to death?"
"Yes," she responded, lying back in her chair, sighing rather wearily
and passing her hand across her aching brow.
There was a deep silence. We could hear the throbbing of each other's
heart. At last she looked up tremblingly, with an expression of
undissembled pain, saying--
"The truth is, Doctor, it was an absolute mystery, just as were the
events of last night--a mystery which is driving me to desperation."
"It's not the mystery that troubles you," I said, in a low earnest
voice, "but the recollection of that dream-marriage, is it not?"
"Exactly," she faltered.
"You do not recollect the name announced by the clergyman, as that of
your husband?" I inquired, eagerly.
"I heard it but once, and it was strange and unusual; the droning voice
stumbled over it indistinctly, therefore I could not catch it."
She was in ignorance that she was my bride. Her heart was beating
rapidly, the lace on her bosom trembled as she slowly lifted her eyes to
mine. Could she ever love me?
A thought of young Chetwode stung me to the quick. He was my rival, yet
I was already her husband.
"I have been foolish to tell you all this," she said presently, with a
nervous laugh. "It was only a dream--a dream so vivid that I have
sometimes thought it was actual truth."
Her speech was the softest murmur, and the beautiful face, nearer to
mine than it had been before, was looking at me with beseeching
tenderness. Then her eyes dropped, a martyr pain passed over her face,
her small hands sought each other as though they must hold something,
the fingers clasped themselves, and her head drooped.
"I am glad you have told me," I said. "The incident is certainly
curious, judged in connexion with the unusual phenomena of last night."
"Yes, but I ought not to have told you," she said slowly. "Nora will be
very angry."
"Why?"
"Because she made me promise to tell absolutely no one," she answered,
with a faint sharpness in her voice. There were loss and woe in those
words of hers.
"What motive had she in preserving your secret?" I asked, surprised.
"Surely she is--"
My love interrupted me.
"No, do not let us discuss her motives or her actions; she is my friend.
Let us not talk of the affair any more, I beg of you."
She was pale as death, and it seemed as though a tremor ran through all
her limbs.
"But am I not also your friend, Miss Wynd?" I asked in deep
seriousness.
"I--I hope you are."
Her voice was timid, troubled; but her sincere eyes again lifted
themselves to mine.
"I assure you that I am," I declared. "If you will but give me your
permission I will continue, with Hoefer, to seek a solution of this
puzzling problem."
"It is so uncanny," she said. "To me it surpasses belief."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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