Page:The Naval Officer (1829), vol. 3.djvu/259

 was loving me. I could not drive from my thoughts, that it was through my unfortunate and illicit connexion with her that I had lost all that made life dear to me.

At this moment (and not once since the morning I awoke from it) my singular dream recurred to my mind. The thoughts which never had once during my eventful voyage from the Bahamas to the Cape, and thence to England, presented themselves in my waking hours, must certainly have possessed my brain during sleep. Why else should it never have occurred to my rational mind that the connexion with Eugenia would certainly endanger that intended with Emily? It was Eugenia that placed Emily in mourning, out of my reach, and, as it were, on the top of the Nine-pin Rock.

Here, then, my dream was explained; and I now felt all the horrors of that reality which I thought at the time was no more than the effect of a disordered imagination. Yet I could not blame Eugenia; the poor girl had fallen a vic-