As for me, my little cup of pleasure was dashed to the ground.
Annunziata, fanning herself and talking volubly, made but a poor substitute for Andrea, and I began to be dimly aware of a certain hostility towards myself in the atmosphere.
The next dance was played, and the next, and still Annunziata sat there smiling. The two gentlemen had long disappeared into the ball-room, and we had the smaller apartment to ourselves.
"I can't stand it any longer," I thought, "even with another waltz with Andrea in prospect." And making an apology to the Marchesina, I stole through a side door upstairs to bed.
Sounds of revelry reached me faint through the thick walls for many succeeding hours; and I lay awake on my great bed till the dawn crept in through the shutters.
"I have been a wallflower," I reflected, "a wallflower, to do me justice, for the first time in my life. And I'm not so sure that, in some respects, it wasn't the nicest dance I ever was at."
CHAPTER IX. "WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO ME?"
"Costanza is so cross," said Bianca, drawing me aside, in her childish fashion; "she talks of going back at once to Florence, and I don't know who would be sorry if she did."