et. For although she was only a false dream
of mine, a mere recollection of the exciting and eventful day, a stray
figment of my over-tired and excited brain--a _more_ than agreeable
figment (what else _could_ she be!)--she was also a great lady, and
had treated me, a perfect stranger and a perfect nobody, with singular
courtesy and kindness; which I repaid, it is true, with a love so deep
and strong that my very life was hers to do what she liked with, and
always had been since I first saw her, and always would be as long as
there was breath in my body! But this did not constitute an
acquaintance without a proper introduction, even in France--even in a
dream. Even in dreams one must be polite, even to stray figments of
one's tired, sleeping brain.

And then what business had _she_ in _this_, _my_ particular dream--as
she herself had asked of me?

But _was_ it a dream? I remembered my lodgings at Pentonville, that I
had left yesterday morning. I remembered what I was--why I came to
Paris; I remembered the very bedroom at the Paris hotel where I was
now fast asleep, its loudly ticking clock, and all the meagre
furniture. And here was I, broad awake and conscious in the middle of
an old avenue that had long ceased to exist--that had been built over
by a huge brick edifice covered with newly painted trellis-work. I saw
it,--this edifice,--myself, only twelve hours ago. And yet here was
everything as it had been when I was a child; and all through the
agency of this solid phantom of a lovely young English duchess, whose
warm gloved hands I had only this minute been holding in mine! The
scent of her gloves was still in my palm. I looked at my watch; it
marked twenty-three minutes to twelve. All this had happened in less
than three-quarters of an hour!

Pondering over all this in hopeless bewilderment, I turned my steps
towards my old home, and to my surprise, was just able to look over
the garden wall, which I had once thought about ten feet high.

Under the old apple-tree in full bloom sat my mother, darning small
socks; with her flaxen side-curls (as it was her fashion to wear them)
half concealing her face. My emotion and astonishment were immense. My
heart beat fast. I felt its pulse in my temples, and my breath was
short.

At a little green table that I remembered well sat a small boy, rather
quaintly dressed in a bygone fashion, with a frill round his wide
shirt collar, and his golden hair cut quite close at the