that, although I was not _expected_ to be in my uncle's room at any time
but that of lessons, all the morning I had a feeling as if I ought to be
there, while yet glad that my uncle was not there.

It was late before he returned, and I went to bed. Perhaps I retired so
soon that I might not have to look into his eyes. Usually, I sat now
until he came home. I was long in getting to sleep, and then I dreamed. I
thought I was out in the storm, and the flash came which revealed the
horse and his rider, but they were both different. The horse in the dream
was black as coal, as if carved out of the night itself; and the man
upon him was the beautiful stranger whose horse I had not seen for the
garden-wall. The darkness fell, and the voice of my uncle called to me. I
waited for him in the storm with a troubled heart, for I knew he had not
seen that vision, and I could no more tell him of it, than could
Christabel tell her father what she had seen after she lay down. I woke,
but my waking was no relief.




CHAPTER XI.


THE MOLE BURROWS.

I slept again after my dream, and do not know whether he came into my
room as he generally did when he had not said good-night to me. Of course
I woke unhappy, and the morning-world had lost something of its natural
glow, its lovely freshness: it was not this time a thing new-born of the
creating word. I dawdled with my dressing. The face kept coming, and