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In another minute they were kneeling at the throne's foot, saying, 'O Queen, live for ever! exactly as the woman had taught them. And a splendid dream-lady, all gold and silver and jewels and snowy drift of veils, was raising Anthea, and saying 'Don't be frightened, I really am SO glad you came! The land where the sun never sets! I am delighted to see you!
There was something laughably untrue in their pompous stride and exaggerated sentiment; they were neither human nor tolerable likenesses of humanity, but fantastic maskers, rendering heroism and nature alike ridiculous by the grave absurdity of their pretensions to such attributes; and as for the peerless dream-lady, behold! there advanced up the saloon, with a movement like a jointed doll, a sort of wax-figure of an angel, a creature as cold as moonshine, an artifice in petticoats, with an intellect of pretty phrases and only the semblance of a heart, yet in all these particulars the true type of a young man's imaginary mistress.
A picture rose in her mind of Sebert's dream-lady, passing her waiting-time among soft-voiced maids, and her heart turned sick within her. It was little time that the pack gave her for revery, however; now it was Edric Jarl of whom they wanted to hear.
It came like a sigh of tender pity across the stillness and he bent his head to listen. It was the voice of the faintest of breezes blowing up from the south and passing his window. He threw wide his arms to empty space as if to embrace some invisible form. "Ligeia, Ligeia, my beautiful one," he breathed, invoking his dream-lady, "Be my counsellor and guide!
King looked over the low wall. The prospect was alluring. The pool, the trickling rivulets, the mossy banks, the dense shadows: it was maddening to think he could not enter! "I wouldn't be in there a minute," he argued. "And I might catch a glimpse of a dream-lady. Now, I say, Hobbs, here's a low place. I could jump " "Mr. King, if you do that I am ruined forever. I am trusted by the steward.
"Ah, false one," shrieked the dream-lady, pretending to faint, but dissolving into thin air, out of which came the deplorable murmur of her voice, "your inconstancy has annihilated me." "So be it," said the cruel Man of Fancy to himself; "and a good riddance too."
She could not laugh as she would once have done; instead she choked in the cup and pushed it from her. A passionate yearning came over her for one such word, one such look, as he would give the dream-lady when she should come. With her secret on her lips, she lifted her eyes to his. A little amused but more pitying, and withal very, very kind, his glance met hers; and her courage forsook her.
There his wonderful dream-lady, "Ligeia," had seemed especially near to him, and often, when the day's work was done and he recognized her voice in the music of the waves or felt her kiss in the soft, southern air, blown across spicey islets, he would up and away with her across the world, on the moon's silver track; or on nights when no moon came up out of the sea, would wander with her through the star-sown sky.
And from her point of view, it is rather an obvious solution. You see, she does not know about that paragon in the Middle West." "She existed only in my imagination." "Oh, a dream-lady," said Christine, and her eyes brightened a little. "No wonder you thought her too good for Ned. Well, that brings me to what I came to tell you. I have decided to marry Edward Hickson."
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