'What dream?'

'By a dream of a face. For three nights before her marriage, she
saw a face in a dream - always the same face, and only One.'

'A terrible face?'

'No. The face of a dark, remarkable-looking man, in black, with
black hair and a grey moustache - a handsome man except for a
reserved and secret air. Not a face she ever saw, or at all like a
face she ever saw. Doing nothing in the dream but looking at her
fixedly, out of darkness.'

'Does the dream come back?'

'Never. The recollection of it is all her trouble.'

'And why does it trouble her?'

Carolina shook her head.

'That's master's question,' said la bella. 'She don't know. She
wonders why, herself. But I heard her tell him, only last night,
that if she was to find a picture of that face in our Italian house
(which she is afraid she will) she did not know how she could ever
bear it.'

Upon my word I was fearful after this (said the Genoese courier) of
our coming to the old palazzo, lest some such ill-starred picture
should happen to be there. I knew there were many there; and, as