m, but stood gazing around the room in wild
bewilderment. How came she standing there? By what spirit of love or
hate had she been sent to that silver basin?

"Rachael, is anything wrong? Are you ill?"

The woman began to shiver. Perhaps the ice cold water had chilled her.

She looked down upon her hands as if the red shadow haunted her yet, but
all she saw were drops of pure water rolling down her slender fingers,
and falling one by one to the floor.

"I do not know!" she answered, in cold bewilderment. "Something drove me
out from the bed, and sent me wandering, wandering, wandering! But how I
came here, alas! Norton, I cannot tell you."

Rachael shivered all over as she spoke, and, as if drawn that way by
some unseen force, came close to Lord Hope's bed, and sat down upon it.

"Oh, I am so cold--so dreary cold!"

An eider down quilt lay across the foot of the bed. Lord Hope reached
forward and folded it around her, very gently, murmuring:

"My poor wife! poor Rachael! You have been dreaming."

"No; it was not all dreaming, Norton. I did see--no matter what; but it
was something that terrified me out of all the joy and glory of this
night. I must have been fearfully worn out to sleep after that; but the
lamp, which I left behind me, is burning there, and my hands were in the
cold water, trying to wash themselves, when you awoke me. I must have
been in that fearful picture gallery again."

"You have courage to go there at all, Rachael!"

"I got there without knowing it. The rooms have been so changed I lost
my way, and took the wrong corridor, and there I saw--"

"_Her_ picture."

"Was it that? Oh! was it only that?"

"It is there--her picture--life size; and so like that I would not look
on it for the world."

"But what carried me there, Norton? On this night, too, when I have been
honored, as your wife should be for the first time! when her mother has
taken me by the hand and lifted the cloud from my name! Ah, Norton!
Norton! it was glory to me when I saw your eyes kindle, and answer back
to mine, as the noblest of the land crowded round to do me homage. Then
I knew that the old love was perfect yet. Oh, Destiny is cruel, that it
will not let me have one perfect day!"

"After all, it was but a picture. Why allow it to distress you so?"

Lord Hope took her hands in his. She did not shrink from his touch now,
as she had in her abnormal sleep; but he felt her palms growing warm,
and saw the light com