es; and Dermody's pretty cottage
used to be one of the popular attractions of the scene. What really
surprised me was to see, as I now plainly saw, that she had some painful
association with my old home. I decided on answering her question in
such terms as might encourage her to take me into her confidence. In a
moment more I should have told her that my boyhood had been passed
at Greenwater Broad--in a moment more, we should have recognized each
other--when a trivial interruption suspended the words on my lips. The
child ran out of the bed-chamber, with a quaintly shaped key in her
hand. It was one of the things she had taken out of my pockets and it
belonged to the cabin door on board the boat. A sudden fit of curiosity
(the insatiable curiosity of a child) had seized her on the subject of
this key. She insisted on knowing what door it locked; and, when I had
satisfied her on that point, she implored me to take her immediately to
see the boat. This entreaty led naturally to a renewal of the disputed
question of going, or not going, to bed. By the time the little creature
had left us again, with permission to play for a few minutes longer,
the conversation between Mrs. Van Brandt and myself had taken a new
direction. Speaking now of the child's health, we were led naturally to
the kindred subject of the child's connection with her mother's dream.

"She had been ill with fever," Mrs. Van Brandt began; "and she was
just getting better again on the day when I was left deserted in this
miserable place. Toward evening, she had another attack that frightened
me dreadfully. She became perfectly insensible--her little limbs were
stiff and cold. There is one doctor here who has not yet abandoned the
town. Of course I sent for him. He thought her insensibility was caused
by a sort of cataleptic seizure. At the same time, he comforted me by
saying that she was in no immediate danger of death; and he left me
certain remedies to be given, if certain symptoms appeared. I took her
to bed, and held her to me, with the idea of keeping her warm.
Without believing in mesmerism, it has since struck me that we might
unconsciously have had some influence over each other, which may explain
what followed. Do you think it likely?"

"Quite likely. At the same time, the mesmeric theory (if you could
believe in it) would carry the explanation further still. Mesmerism
would assert, not only that you and the child influenced each other, but
that--