"Your wife? For God's sake, don't tell her!" Neville's voice replied. "Such a disgraceful--" Here his words sank to a whisper, and Thelma could not distinguish them. Another minute, and her husband entered with soft precaution, fearing to awake her--she stretched out her arms to welcome him, and he hastened to her with an exclamation of tenderness and pleasure.
"My darling! Not asleep yet?"
She smiled,--but there was something very piteous in her smile, had the dim light enabled him to perceive it.
"No, not yet, Philip! And yet I think I have been dreaming of--the Altenfjord."
"Ah! it must be cold there now," he answered lightly. "It's cold enough here, in all conscience. To-night there is a bitter east wind, and snow is falling."
She heard this account of the weather with almost morbid interest. Her thoughts instantly betook themselves again to Norway, and dwelt there. To the last,--before her aching eyes closed in the slumber she so sorely needed,--she seemed to be carried away in fancy to a weird stretch of gloom-enveloped landscape where she stood entirely alone, vaguely wondering at the dreary scene. "How strange it seems!" she murmured almost aloud. "All snow and darkness at the Altenfjord!"