n a moment.

What was this that lay so heavy at her heart! Was it the remnant of an
evil dream?

What had happened? Something must have happened! Else why should she find
herself seated in that easy-chair at the open window, and see that her
bed had not been occupied?

Then, slowly, she recollected the events of the previous night--her
retirement to her chamber; her talk there with the housekeeper about Rose
Cameron, the "handsome hizzie," who had been haunting the premises and
giving trouble all that day; the message from her father; her affecting
interview with him in his bedroom; her return to her own apartment
through the dimly-lighted, deserted hall, where she met the pale and
spectral form of Lord Arondelle, who vanished as she called to him!
her terrified flight into her own chamber!

All these incidents she clearly remembered.

Then her excited vigil in the easy-chair, by the open window, and the two
voices that broke upon it--that of her betrothed husband and that of a
woman--of this same Rose Cameron, whose name had been so disreputably
connected with Lord Arondelle's; who then and there claimed to be his
wife and was not contradicted!

There! that was the weight that lay so heavy at her heart!

"And yet it must have been a dream!" she said to herself. Of course she
had fallen asleep there in the easy-chair, and with her thoughts running
on the apparition she had met in the hall, and on the country people's
gossip about Lord Arondelle and Rose Cameron, she had had that evil
dream. Unquestionably it was only a dream! Lord Arondelle could never
play so base a part as he had seemed to do in her dream! She reproached
herself for having even involuntarily been the subject of it.

And yet! and yet! the weight lay heavy at her heart, and although this
was a warm June morning, she shivered as though it had been January.

She arose to close the window.

Then--

What a magnificent and beautiful scene burst upon her vision! The eastern
horizon was ablaze with glory. Lovely morning clouds, soft, transparent
white, tinted with rose, violet and gold, tempered the dazzling splendor
of the rising sun, and half vailed the opal-hued mountain tops, and even
hung upon the emerald mountain side. Morning sky, rosy clouds, and opal
mountains, were all reflected as by a mirror in the clear water of the
lake below.

The hamlet at the foot of the mountain was gay with flags and banners and
festoons of flowers. The bridge