“I am awoke as usual in the morning by the entrance of my maid with hot water. “‘Well, how is Mr. Gerard this morning?’ I ask, springing into a sitting posture. “She puts down the hot water tin and stares at her leisure at me. “‘My dear Miss Phœbe, how should _I_ know? Please God he is in good health and safe, and that we shall have good news of him before long.’ “‘Have not you asked how he is?’ I ask impatiently. ‘He did not seem quite himself last night; there was something odd about him. I was afraid he was in for another touch of fever.’ “‘Last night--fever,’ repeats she, slowly and disconnectedly echoing some of my words. ‘I beg your pardon, ma’am, I am sure, but I have not the least idea in life what you are talking about.’ “‘How stupid you are!’ I say, quite at the end of my patience. ‘Did not Mr. Gerard come back unexpectedly last night, and did not I hear him knocking, and run down to open the door, and did not Stephens come too, and afterwards take him up to bed?’ “The stare of bewilderment gives way to a laugh. “‘You have been dreaming, ma’am. Of course I cannot answer for what you did last night, but I am sure that Stephens knows no more of the young gentleman than I do, for only just now, at breakfast, he was saying that he thought it was about time for us to have some tidings of him and master.’ “‘A dream!’ cry I indignantly. ‘Impossible! I was no more dreaming then than I am now.’ “But time convinces me that I am mistaken, and that during all the time that I thought I was standing at the open hall-door, talking to my beloved, in reality I was lying on my bed in the depths of sleep, with no other company than the scent of the flowers and the light of the moon. At this discovery a great and terrible depression falls on me. I go to my mother to tell her of my vision, and at the end of my narrative I say, “‘Mother, I know well that Bobby is dead, and that I shall never see him any more. I feel assured that he died last night, and that he came himself to tell me of his going. I am sure that there is nothing left for me now but to go too.’ “I speak thus far with great calmness, but when I have done I break out into loud and violent weeping. Mother rebukes me gently, telling me that there is nothing more natural than that I should dream of a person who constantly occupies my waking thoughts, nor that, considering the gloomy nature of my apprehensions about him, my dream should be of a sad and ominous kind; but that, above all dreams and omens, God is good, that He has preserved him hitherto, and that, for her part, no devil-sent apparition shall shake her confidence in His continued clemency. I go away a little comforted, though not very much, and still every night I kneel at the open window facing Plymouth and the sea, and pray for my sailor boy. But it seems to me, despite all my self-reasonings, despite all that mother says, that my prayers for him are prayers for the dead. CHAPTER IV.