"Ah," superciliously remarked Lady Ellis, playing with her jet chain. They were interrupted by Margaret Jupp, who came up with Mrs. Chester. The young lady, hearing of the expedition to the kitchens, was not pleased to have been omitted, so Mrs. Chester was going to do the honours again. "I think there's nothing so nice as looking over a house," said Margaret. "Kitchens have great interest for me." "I suppose I may not ask to be of the party?" interposed Lady Ellis, looking at Mrs. Chester. "Certainly you may: why not?" And they slowly strolled across the lawn on the expedition. Meanwhile Mr. Lake, in obedience to the summons, had found his wife in the large kitchen. She was still standing in the middle of the floor, just as though she had been glued to it. "Did you want me, Clara?" "Do come here," she whispered, in quite an awestruck tone. And Mr. Lake, wondering a little, stepped up and stood beside her. Clara, touching his arm, pointed to different features of the room, turning about to do it. "Do you see them, Robert? Do you remember?" "I have not been in the kitchen before," was his answer, after a pause, looking curiously at the room and then at her. "It is the kitchen of my dream!" "The what?" exclaimed Mr. Lake. "The kitchen I saw in my dream." He barely stopped an irreverent laugh. What he saw upon her face arrested it. "It is," she whispered, her voice sounding strangely hollow, as though some great physical change had taken place within. "I described its features to you that night, and now you may see them. We--we are standing in the same position!" she burst forth more eagerly, as if the fact had but that moment occurred to her. "See! I was here, you on that side me, as you are now; here was the small round dark table close to us; there is the large window, with the ironing-board underneath it; there, to the left, are the dresser and the shelves, and even the very plates and dishes upon them--" "Of the precise willow pattern," put in Mr. Lake. "There, behind us, is the fireplace; and around are the several doors, in the very self-same places that I saw them," she continued, too eager to notice or heed the mocking interruption. "I told, you it looked like a farm-house kitchen, large and bleak: you may see that it does, now." "I shall begin to think that you are dreaming still," he returned. "I wish I was! I wish I had never seen in reality the kitchen of that dream. I did not at the first moment recognise it. When I came in with Mrs. Chester and Mary Jupp, the place struck me as being familiar, and I was just going to say to them, 'I must have been here before,' when my dream flashed upon me, like a chill. I felt awestruck--sick; I feel so yet." "This beats spirit-rapping," said Mr. Lake. "Let us lay hold of the table, and see whether it won't turn." "_Why_ will you turn it into mockery?" she resumed, her tone one of sharp pain. "You know that dream seemed to foretel my death."