sat waiting for her son and her future
daughter-in-law. Punctual to the appointed
time, Isaac hurriedly and nervously led his
promised wife into the room. His mother
rose to receive her—advanced a few steps,
smiling—looked Rebecca full in the eyes
—and suddenly stopped. Her face, which
had been flushed the moment before, turned
white in an instant—her eyes lost their
expression of softness and kindness, and assumed
a blank look of terror—her outstretched
hands fell to her sides, and she staggered
back a few steps with a low cry to her son.

"Isaac! " she whispered, clutching him
fast by the arm, when he asked alarmedly if
she was taken ill. "Isaac! Does that
woman's face remind you of nothing?"

Before he could answer; before he could
look round to where Rebecca, astonished and
angered by her reception, stood, at the lower
end of the room; his mother pointed
impatiently to her writing-desk, and gave him the
key.

"Open it," she said, in a quick, breathless
whisper.

"What does this mean? Why am I
treated as if I had no business here? Does
your mother want to insult me? " asked
Rebecca, angrily.

"Open it, and give me the paper in
the left-hand drawer. Quick! quick, for
Heaven's sake! " said Mrs. Scatchard, shrinking
further back in terror. Isaac gave her the
paper. She looked it over eagerly for a
moment—then followed Rebecca, who was now
turning away haughtily to leave the room,
and caught her by the shoulder—abruptly
raised the long, loose sleeve of her gown, and
glanced at her hand and arm. Something
like fear began to steal over the angry
expression of Rebecca's face as she shook
herself free from the old woman's grasp. " Mad!"
she said to herself; " and Isaac never told
me." With these few words she left the
room.

Isaac was hastening after her when his
mother turned and stopped his further
progress. It wrung his heart to see the misery
and terror in her face as she looked at him.

"Light grey eyes," she said, in low, mournful,
awe-struck tones, pointing towards the
open door. " A droop in the left eyelid.
Flaxen hair with a gold-yellow streak in it.
White arms with a down on them. Little,
lady's hand, with a reddish look under the
finger-nails. The woman of the dream!—Oh,
Heaven! Isaac, the woman of the dream!"

That faint cleaving doubt which he had
never been able to shake off in Rebecca
Murdoch's presence, was fatally set at rest
for ever. He had seen her face, then, before
—seven years before, on his birthday, in the
bedroom of the lonely inn. "The woman of
the dream!"

"Be warned, Oh, my son! be warned!
Isaac! Isaac! let her go, and do you stop
with me!"

Something darkened the parlour window, as
those words were said. A sudden chill ran
through him; and he glanced sidelong at the
shadow. Rebecca Murdoch had come back.
She was peering in curiously at them over the
low window blind.

"I have promised to marry, mother," he
said, " and marry I must."

The tears came into his eyes as he spoke,
and dimmed his sight; but he could just
discern the fatal face outside moving away
again from the window.

His mother's head sank lower.

"Are you faint?" he whispered.

"Broken-hearted, Isaac."

He stooped down and kissed her. The
shadow, as he did so, returned to the window;
and the fatal face peered in curiously once
more.

Three weeks after that day, Isaac and
Rebecca were man and wife. All that was
hopelessly dogged and stubborn in the man's
moral nature, seemed to have closed round
his fatal passion, and to have fixed it
unassailably in his heart.

After that first interview in the cottage
parlour, no consideration would induce Mrs.
Scatchard to see her son's wife again, or even
to talk of her when Isaac tried hard to plead
her cause after their marriage. This course of
conduct was not in any degree occasioned by a
discovery of the degradation in which Rebecca
had lived. There was no question of that
between mother and son. There was no question
of anything but the fearfully exact
resemblance between the living breathing woman
and the spectre woman of Isaac's dream.
Rebecca, on her side, neither felt nor
expressed the slightest sorrow at the estrangement
between herself and her mother-
in-law. Isaac, for the sake of peace, had
never contradicted her first idea that age and
long illness had affected Mrs. Scatchard's
mind. He even allowed his wife to upbraid
him for not having confessed this to her at
the time of their marriage engagement, rather
than risk anything by hinting at the truth.
The sacrifice of his integrity before his one
all-mastering delusion, seemed but a small
thing, and cost his conscience but little, after
the sacrifices he had already made.

The time of waking from his delusion—the
cruel and the rueful time—was not far off.
After some quiet months of married life, as
the summer was ending, and the year was
getting on towards the month of his birthday,
Isaac found his wife altering towards
him. She grew sullen and contemptuous—
she formed acquaintances of the most
dangerous kind, in defiance of his objections, his
entreaties, and his commands,—and, worst of
all, she learnt, ere long, after every fresh
difference with her husband, to seek the
deadly self-oblivion of drink. Little by little,
after the first miserable discovery that his
wife was keeping company with drunkards,
the shocking certainty forced itself on Isaac