The feeling I could not suppress trembled in my tones. He may have been
sensitive to it or he may have been simply good-natured. Whatever the
cause, this is what he said in reply:
"It was a dream. Remember that I insist upon its being a dream. But some
of its details are very clear in my mind. When I stumbled upon this
dream-maiden in the moonlight her face was turned from me toward the
ocean, and I did not see her features then or afterwards. Startled by
some sound I made, she crouched, drew back and fled to cover. That
cover, I have good reason to believe, was this very house."
I reached out my hand and touched him on the arm.
"This dream-maiden was a woman?" I inquired. "One of the women now in
this house."
He replied reluctantly.
"She was a young woman and she wore a long cloak. My dream ends there. I
can not even say whether she was fair or dark."
I recognized that he had reached the limit of his explanations, and,
wringing his hand, I started for the nearest window, which proved to be
that of the music-room. I was about to enter when I saw two women
crossing to the opposite doorway, and paused with a full heart to note
them, for one was Mrs. Lansing and the other Dorothy. The aunt had
evidently come for the niece and they were leaving the room together.
Not amicably, however. Harsh words had passed, or I am no judge of the
human countenance. Dorothy especially bore herself like one who finds
difficulty in restraining herself from some unhappy outburst, and as she
disappeared from my sight in the wake of her formidable companion my
attention was again called to her hands, which she held clenched at her
sides.
I was stepping into the room when my impulse was again checked. Another
person was sitting there, a person I had been most anxious to see ever
since my last interview with Sinclair. It was Gilbertine Murray, sitting
alone in an attitude of deep, and possibly not altogether happy
thought.
I paused to study the sweet face. Truly she was a beautiful woman. I had
never before realized how beautiful. Her rich coloring, her noble traits
and the spirited air, which gave her such marked distinction, bespoke at
once an ardent nature and a pure soul.
I did not wonder that Sinclair had succumbed to charms so pronounced and
uncommon, and as I gazed longer and noted the tremulous droop of her
ripe lips and the faraway look of eyes which had created a great stir in
the social world when they first flashed upon it. I felt that if
Sinclair could see her now he would never doubt her again, despite the
fact that the attitude into which she had fallen was one of great
fatigue, if not despondency.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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