followed by evil. I dreamed--. But
it will offend you, cousin?"

"What!" said Roland, "a dream? You dreamed perhaps that I forgot both
wisdom and affection, when, for the sake of this worthless beast,
Briareus, I drew you into difficulty and peril?"

"No, no," said Edith, earnestly, and then added in a low voice, "I
dreamed of Richard Braxley!"

"Curse him!" muttered the youth, with tones of bitter passion: "it is to
him we owe all that now afflicts us,--poverty and exile, our distresses
and difficulties, our fears and our dangers. For a wooer," he added, with
a smile of equal bitterness, "methinks he has fallen on but a rough way
of proving his regard. But you dreamed of him. Well, what was it? He came
to you with the look of a beaten dog, fawned at your feet, and displaying
that infernal will, 'Marry me,' quoth he, 'fair maid, and I will be a
greater rascal than before,--I will burn this will, and consent to enjoy
Roland Forrester's lands and houses in right of my wife, instead of
claiming them in trust for an heir no longer in the land of the living.'
Cur!--and but for you, Edith, I would have repaid his insolence as it
deserved. But you ever intercede for your worst enemies. There is that
confounded Stackpole, now: I vow to heaven, I am sorry I cut the rascal
down!--But you dreamed of Braxley! What said the villain?"

"He said," replied Edith, who had listened mournfully, but in silence, to
the young man's hasty expressions, like one who was too well acquainted
with the impetuosity of his temper to think of opposing him in his angry
moments, or perhaps because her spirits were too much subdued by her
fears to allow her to play the monitress,--"He said, and frowningly too,
'that soft words were with him the prelude to hard resolutions, and that
where he could not win as the turtle, he could take his prey like a
vulture;'--or some such words of anger. Now, Roland, I have twice before
dreamed of this man, and on each occasion a heavy calamity ensued, and
that on the following day. I dreamed of him the night before our uncle
died. I dreamed a second time, and the next day he produced and recorded
the will that robbed us of our inheritance. I dreamed of him again last
night; and what evil is now hovering over us I know not;--but, it is
foolish of me to say so,--yet my fears tell me it will be something
dreadful."

"Your fears, I hope, will deceive you," said Roland, smiling in spite of
himself at this little display