CHAPTER VIII.

_A Strange Dream_.

RESTLESS are the dreams of the lover that is young. Ferdinand Armine

started awake from the agony of a terrible slumber. He had been walking

in a garden with Henrietta Temple, her hand was clasped in his, her

eyes fixed on the ground, as he whispered delicious words. His face

was flushed, his speech panting and low. Gently he wound his vacant arm

round her graceful form; she looked up, her speaking eyes met his, and

their trembling lips seemed about to cling into a------

When lo! the splendour of the garden faded, and all seemed changed and

dim; instead of the beautiful arched walks, in which a moment before

they appeared to wander, it was beneath the vaulted roof of some temple

that they now moved; instead of the bed of glowing flowers from which

he was about to pluck an offering for her bosom, an altar rose, from the

centre of which upsprang a quick and lurid tongue of fire. The dreamer

gazed upon his companion, and her form was tinted with the dusky hue of

the flame, and she held to her countenance a scarf, as if pressed by the

unnatural heat. Great fear suddenly came over him. With haste, yet

with tenderness, he himself withdrew the scarf from the face of his

companion, and this movement revealed the visage of Miss Grandison.

Ferdinand Armine awoke and started up in his bed. Before him still

appeared the unexpected figure. He jumped out of bed, he gazed upon the

form with staring eyes and open mouth. She was there, assuredly she was

there; it was Katherine, Katherine his betrothed, sad and reproachful.

The figure faded before him; he advanced with outstretched hand; in his

desperation he determined to clutch the escaping form: and he found

in his grasp his dressing-gown, which he had thrown over the back of a

chair.

‘A dream, and but a dream, after all,’ he muttered to himself; ‘and yet

a strange one.’

His brow was heated; he opened the casement. It was still night; the

moon had vanished, but the stars were still shining. He recalled with an

effort the scene with which he had become acquainted yesterday for the

first time. Before him, serene and still, rose the bowers of Ducie.

And their mistress? That angelic form whose hand he had clasped in his

dream, was not then merely a shadow. She breathed, she lived, and under

the same roof. Henrietta Temple was at this moment under the same roof

as himself: and what were her slumbers? Were they wild as his own, or

sweet and innocent as herself? Did his form flit over her closed vision

at this charmed hour, as hers had visited his? Had it been scared away

by an apparition as awful? Bore anyone to her the same relation as

Katherine Grandison to him? A fearful surmise, that had occurred to him

now for the first time, and which it seemed could never again quit his

brain. The stars faded away, the breath of morn was abroad, the chant

of birds arose. Exhausted in body and in mind, Ferdinand Armine flung

himself upon his bed, and soon was lost in slumbers undisturbed as the

tomb.