terrible dream! I wonder that you can forget it. Is it possible to
forget this one expression?--'It is in her heart now; we must have it
out!' Reflect, my husband; for by all means I would have you recall
that dream."

The mind is in a sad state when Sleep, the all-involving, cannot
confine her spectres within the dim region of her sway, but suffers
them to break forth, affrighting this actual life with secrets that
perchance belong to a deeper one. Aylmer now remembered his dream. He
had fancied himself with his servant Aminadab attempting an operation
for the removal of the birthmark; but the deeper went the knife, the
deeper sank the hand, until at length its tiny grasp appeared to have
caught hold of Georgiana's heart; whence, however, her husband was
inexorably resolved to cut or wrench it away.

When the dream had shaped itself perfectly in his memory, Aylmer sat
in his wife's presence with a guilty feeling. Truth often finds its
way to the mind close muffled in robes of sleep, and then speaks with
uncompromising directness of matters in regard to which we practice an
unconscious self-deception during our waking moments. Until now he had
not been aware of the tyrannizing influence acquired by one idea over
his mind, and of the lengths which he might find in his heart to go
for the sake of giving himself peace.

"Aylmer," resumed Georgiana, solemnly, "I know not what may be the
cost to both of us to rid me of this fatal birthmark. Perhaps its
removal may cause cureless deformity; or it may be the stain goes as
deep as life itself. Again; do we know that there is a possibility, on
any terms, of unclasping the firm gripe of this little hand which was
laid upon me before I came into the world?"