When Godfrey awoke again the curtain was drawn, the blinds were pulled up and the butler was bringing in tea. Miss Ogilvy sat by his side, looking at him rather anxiously, while the others were conversing together in a somewhat excited fashion.

"It is splendid, splendid!" Madame was saying. "We have discovered a pearl beyond price, a great treasure. Hush! he awakes."

Godfrey, who experienced a curious feeling of exhaustion and of emptiness of brain, yawned and apologized for having fallen asleep, whereon the professor and the colonel both assured him that it was quite natural on so warm a day. Only Madame Riennes smiled like a sphinx, and asked him if his dreams were pleasant. To this he replied that he remembered none.

Miss Ogilvy, however, who looked rather anxious and guilty, did not speak at all, but busied herself with the tea which Godfrey thought very strong when he drank it. However, it refreshed him wonderfully, which, as it contained some invigorating essence, was not strange. So did the walk in the beautiful garden which he took afterwards, just before the carriage came to drive him back to Kleindorf.

Re-entering the drawing-room to say goodbye, he found the party engaged listening to the contents of a number of sheets of paper closely written in pencil, which were being read to them by Colonel Josiah Smith, who made corrections from time to time.

"Au revoir, my young brother," said Madame Riennes, making some mysterious sign before she took his hand in her fat, cold fingers, "you will come again next Sunday, will you not?"

"I don't know," he answered awkwardly, for he felt afraid of this lady, and did not wish to see her next Sunday.

"Oh! but I do, young brother. You will come, because it gives me so much pleasure to see you," she replied, staring at him with her strange eyes.

Then Godfrey knew that he would come because he must.

"Why does that lady call me 'young brother'?" he asked Miss Ogilvy, who accompanied him to the hall.

"Oh! because it is a way she has. You may have noticed that she called me 'sister'."

"I don't think that I shall call her sister," he remarked with decision. "She is too alarming."

"Not really when you come to know her, for she has the kindest heart and is wonderfully gifted."

"Gifts which make people tell others that they are going to die are not pleasant, Miss Ogilvy."

She shivered a little.

"If her spirit--I mean the truth--comes to her, she must speak it, I suppose. By the way, Godfrey, don't say anything about this talisman and the story you told of it, at Kleindorf, or in writing home."




readonlinefreebook.com Copyright 2016 - 2024