Mr. Lake passed his hand across his brow. It seemed to him that he had heard enough already. "The very first moment, when I met Lady Ellis at your sister's, her eyes puzzled me: those strange, jet-black eyes. I could not think where I had seen them. They seemed to be familiar to my memory, and I thought and thought in vain, even when the weeks went on. On this same night that we are speaking of, I alarmed you by my looks. Mrs. Chester happened to look at me as I sat by the fire; she called out; and you, who were at chess with--with her, came up. You all came round me. I was shaking, and my cheeks were scarlet, somebody exclaimed: I believe you thought I was seized with an ague-fit. Robert, I was shaking with fear, with undefined dread: for an instant before, as I sat looking at her eyes, it flashed into my mind whose eyes they were." "Well, whose?" he asked, for she paused. "They were those of the man who drove the hearse in my dream," she whispered in an awestruck tone. "The very same. You must recollect my describing them to you when I awoke: 'strangely black eyes, the blackest eyes I ever saw,' though of his face I retained no impression. It was singular it should have struck upon me then, when I had been for weeks trying unsuccessfully to get the thread of the mystery." "Oh Clara, my darling, these superstitious feelings are very sad!" he remonstrated. "You ought not to indulge them." "Will you tell me how I could have avoided them? It was not my fault that the dream came to me: or that the eyes of the driver were _her_ eyes: or that my death had been induced through going to Mrs. Chester's. Both you and Mrs. Chester seemed to help me on to it in my dream: and as surely as the man appeared to drive me to the grave in the hearse, so has she driven me to it in reality. I wrote out the dream in full at the time, and you will find the paper in my desk. Read it over when I am gone, and reflect how completely it has been fulfilled." He was silent. A nasty feeling of superstition was beginning to creep over himself. "Will you let me ask you something?" she whispered, presently. He bent his tearful face down upon hers. "Ask me anything." "When--I--am--no longer here, shall you marry her?" Robert Lake darted up with a tremendous word, almost flinging his wife's face from him. His anger bubbled over for a few moments: not at his wife's question, but at the idea it suggested. For remorse was very strong upon him then; the image of Lady Ellis in consequence distasteful. "Mary _her!_ Her! I would rather take a pistol, and shoot myself through the heart--and--sin that it implies--I assert it before my Maker." Clara gave utterance to a faint sigh of relief, and unclasped her arms. "Then you do not love her as you have loved me?" He flung himself on his knees before her, and sobbed aloud in his repentant anguish. She leaned over him endearingly, stroking his face and his hair.