“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, lustrous 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 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?”