"There now!" cried Amy in triumph, watching me as I pushed my clustering hair from my brows, and examined myself more intently. "Did I not tell you so? The change in you is marvellous! I know what it is. You have been getting better unconsciously to yourself in this lovely air and scene, and the long afternoon sleep you've just had has completed the cure."
I smiled at her enthusiasm, but was forced to admit that she was right as far as my actual looks went. No one would believe that I was, or ever had been, ill. In silence I loosened my hair and began to brush it and put it in order before the mirror, and as I did so my thoughts were very busy. I remembered distinctly all that had happened in the studio of Raffaello Cellini, and still more distinctly was I able to recall every detail of the three dreams that had visited me in my slumber. The NAME, too, that had been the key-note of them all I also remembered, but some instinct forbade me to utter it aloud. Once I thought, "Shall I take a pencil and write it down lest I forget it?" and the same instinct said "No." Amy's voluble chatter ran on like the sound of a rippling brook all the time I thus meditated over the occurrences of the day.
"Say, child!" she exclaimed; "will you go to the dance?"
"Certainly I will, with pleasure," I answered, and indeed I felt as if I should thoroughly enjoy it.
"Brava! It will be real fun. There are no end of foreign titles coming, I believe. The Colonel's a bit grumpy about it,--he always is when he has to wear his dress suit. He just hates it. That man hasn't a particle of vanity. He looks handsomer in his evening clothes than in anything else, and yet he doesn't see it. But tell me," and her pretty face became serious with a true feminine anxiety, "whatever will you wear? You've brought no ball fixings, have you?"
I finished twisting up the last coil of my hair, and turned and kissed her affectionately. She was the most sweet-tempered and generous of women, and she would have placed any one of her elaborate costumes at my disposal had I expressed the least desire in that direction. I answered: "No, dear; I certainly have no regular ball 'fixings,' for I never expected to dance here, or anywhere for that matter. I did not bring the big trunks full of Parisian toilettes that you indulge in, you spoilt bride! Still I have something that may do. In fact it will have to do."