The Story Begun by Walter Hartright of Clement’s Inn, Teacher of Drawing

“Last night I dreamed about you, Miss Fairlie. I dreamed that I was standing inside the communion rails of a church⁠—I on one side of the altar-table, and the clergyman, with his surplice and his prayerbook, on the other. “After a time there walked towards us, down the aisle of the church, a man and a woman, coming to be married. You were the woman. You looked so pretty and innocent in your beautiful white silk dress, and your long white lace veil, that my heart felt for you, and the tears came into my eyes. “They were tears of pity, young lady, that heaven blesses and instead of falling from my eyes like the everyday tears that we all of us shed, they turned into two rays of light which slanted nearer and nearer to the man standing at the altar with you, till they touched his breast. The two rays sprang in arches like two rainbows between me and him. I looked along them, and I saw down into his inmost heart. “The outside of the man you were marrying was fair enough to see. He was neither tall nor short⁠—he was a little below the middle size. A light, active, high-spirited man⁠—about five-and-forty years old, to look at. He had a pale face, and was bald over the forehead, but had dark hair on the rest of his head. His beard was shaven on his chin, but was let to grow, of a fine rich brown, on his cheeks and his upper lip. His eyes were brown too, and very bright; his nose straight and handsome and delicate enough to have done for a woman’s. His hands the same. He was troubled from time to time with a dry hacking cough, and when he put up his white right hand to his