This conversation, however, as was natural, had a certain effect upon both the friends. It threw Colin, who, to be sure, was chiefly concerned, into a world of confused imaginations, which influenced even his dreams, and through his dreams reacted upon himself. When he was alone at night, instead of going to sleep at once, as would have been natural after his day’s journey, he kept falling into absurd little dozes¹, and waking up suddenly with the idea that Alice was standing² by him, that she was calling him, that it was the marriage-day, and that somebody had found him out, and was about to tell his bride that he did not love her; and at last, when he went to sleep in good earnest, the fantastic mélange of recollection and imagination carried him back to Frascati, where he found Arthur and Alice, as of old, in the great salone, with its frescoed³ walls, and talked to them as in former days. He thought Meredith told him of an important journey upon which he was setting out, and made arrangements in the meantime for his sister with an anxiety which the real Arthur had never dreamt of exhibiting. “She will be safe with you at present,” the visionary Arthur seemed to say, “and by-and-by you can send her to me——” And when Colin woke it was hard for him to convince himself at first that he had not been in actual communication with his friend. He accounted for it, of course, as it is very easy to account for dreams, and made up his mind how it came about, and yet left behind in some crevice⁴ of his heart a dumb certainty which hid itself out of sight that it might not be argued with, that after all Arthur and he in the dark had passed by each other, and exchanged a word or thought in passing. Colin took care not to betray even{393} to himself the existence of this conviction; but deep down in the silence it influenced him unawares.

As for Lauderdale, his thoughts, as might have been expected, had taken another direction. Perhaps he was past the age of dreaming. Colin’s revelation which he did not make had possibly told his friend more than if it had been said out in words; and the two began their second day’s journey with but little talk, and that of a vague and general kind. They had not gone far upon the white and dusty road when Lauderdale drew aside a little, and stepped across the boundary of furze and wild thorn and bramble bushes which separated it from the hillside.

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