A Romance of Two Worlds Part 3

At this word I start and gasp for breath; I would shriek, but cannot, for a heavy hand seems to close my mouth, and an immense weight presses me down. I struggle violently with this unseen Power--little by little I gain the advantage. One effort more! I win the victory--I wake!

"Sakes alive!" says a familiar voice; "you HAVE had a spell of sleep! I got home about two, nearly starving, and I found you here curled up 'in a rosy infant slumber,' as the song says. So I hunted up the Colonel and had lunch, for it seemed a sin to disturb you. It's just struck four. Shall we have some tea up here?"

I looked at Mrs. Everard, and smiled a.s.sent. So I had been sleeping for two hours and a half, and I had evidently been dreaming all the time; but my dreams had been as vivid as realities. I felt still rather drowsy, but I was thoroughly rested and in a state of delicious tranquillity. My friend rang the bell for the tea, and then turned round and surveyed me with a sort of wonder.

"What have you done to yourself, child?" she said at last, approaching the bed where I lay, and staring fixedly at me.

"What do you mean?"

"Why, you look a different creature. When I left you this morning you were pale and haggard, a sort of die-away delicate invalid; now your eyes are bright; and your cheeks have quite a lovely colour in them; your lips, too, are the right tint. But perhaps," and here she looked alarmed--"perhaps you've got the fever?"

"I don't think so," I said amusedly, and I stretched out my hand for her to feel.

"No, you haven't," she continued, evidently rea.s.sured; "your palm is moist and cool, and your pulse is regular. Well, you look spry, anyhow.

I shouldn't wonder if you made up your mind to have a dance to-night."

"Dance?" I queried. "What dance, and where?"

"Well, Madame Didier, that jolly little furbelowed Frenchwoman with whom I was driving just now, has got up a regular party to-night--"

"Hans Breitmann gib a barty?" I interposed, with a mock solemn air of inquiry.

Amy laughed.

"Well, yes, it MAY be that kind of thing, for all I know to the contrary. Anyhow, she's hired the band and ordered a right-down elegant supper. Half the folks in the hotel are going, and a lot of outsiders have got invitations. She asked if we couldn't come--myself, the Colonel, and you. I said I could answer for myself and the Colonel, but not for you, as you were an invalid. But if you keep on looking as you do at present, no one will believe that there's anything the matter with you.--Tea, Alphonse!"

This to a polite waiter, who was our special attendant, and who just then knocked at the door to know "madame's" orders.

Utterly disbelieving what my friend said in regard to my improved appearance, I rose from the bed and went to the dressing-table to look in the mirror and judge for myself. I almost recoiled from my own reflection, so great was my surprise. The heavy marks under my eyes, the lines of pain that had been for months deepening in my forehead, the plaintive droop of the mouth that had given me such an air of ill-health and anxiety--all were gone as if by magic. I saw a rose-tinted complexion, a pair of laughing, l.u.s.trous eyes, and, altogether, such a happy, mirthful young face smiled back at me, that I half doubted whether it was indeed myself I saw.

"There now!" cried Amy in triumph, watching me as I pushed my cl.u.s.tering 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 t.i.tles 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."

"What is it? Have I seen it? Do show!" and her curiosity was unappeasable.

The discreet Alphonse tapped at the door again just at this moment.

"Entrez!" I answered; and our tea, prepared with the tempting nicety peculiar to the Hotel de L----, appeared. Alphonse set the tray down with his usual artistic nourish, and produced a small note from his vest-pocket.

"For mademoiselle," he said with a bow; and as he handed it to me, his eyes opened wide in surprise. He, too, perceived the change in my appearance. But he was dignity itself, and instantly suppressed his astonishment into the polite impa.s.siveness of a truly accomplished waiter, and gliding from the room on the points of his toes, as was his usual custom, he disappeared. The note was from Cellini, and ran as follows:

"If mademoiselle will be so good as to refrain from choosing any flowers for her toilette this evening, she will confer a favour on her humble friend and servant,

"RAFFAELLO CELLINI."

I handed it to Amy, who was evidently burning with inquisitiveness to know its contents.

"Didn't I say he was a queer young man?" she exclaimed, as she perused the missive attentively. "This is only his way of saying that he means to send you some flowers himself. But what puzzles me is to think how he could possibly know you were going to make any special 'toilette'

this evening. It is really very mysterious when I come to think of it, for Madame Didier said plainly that she would not ask Cellini to the dance till she saw him at the table d'hote to-night."

"Perhaps Alphonse has told him all about it," I suggested.

My friend's countenance brightened.

"Of course! That is it; and Mr. Cellini takes it for granted that a girl of your age would not be likely to refuse a dance. Still there is something odd about it, too. By-the-bye, I forgot to ask you how the picture got on?"

"Oh, very well, I believe," I replied evasively. "Signor Cellini only made a slight outline sketch as a beginning."

"And was it like you?--a really good resemblance?"

"I really did not examine it closely enough to be able to judge."

"What a demure young person you are!" laughed Mrs. Everard. "Now, _I_ should have rushed straight up to the easel and examined every line of what he was doing. You are a model of discretion, really! I shan't be anxious about leaving you alone any more. But about your dress for to-night. Let me see it, there's a good girl."

I opened my trunk and took out a robe of ivory-tinted crepe. It was made with almost severe simplicity, and was unadorned, save by a soft ruffle of old Mechlin lace round the neck and sleeves. Amy examined it critically.

"Now, you would have looked perfectly ghastly in this last night, when you were as pale and hollow-eyed as a sick nun; but to-night," and she raised her eyes to my face, "I believe you will do. Don't you want the bodice cut lower?"

"No, thanks!" I said, smiling. "I will leave that to the portly dowagers--they will expose neck enough for half-a-dozen other women."

My friend laughed.

"Do as you like," she returned; "only I see your gown has short sleeves, and I thought you might like a square neck instead of that little simple Greek round. But perhaps it's better as it is. The stuff is lovely; where did you get it?"

"At one of the London emporiums of Eastern art," I answered. "My dear, your tea is getting cold."

She laid the dress on the bed, and in doing so, perceived the antique-looking book with the silver clasps which I had left there.

"What's this?" she asked, turning it round to discover its name.

"'Letters of a Dead Musician!' What a shivery t.i.tle! Is it morbid reading?"

"Not at all," I replied, as I leaned comfortably back in an easy-chair and sipped my tea. "It is a very scholarly, poetical, and picturesque work. Signor Cellini lent it to me; the author was a friend of his."