"I did not dream at all. I slept soundly," she replied. "But this morning when I woke up and recognized the familiar features of the room I have always slept in—the same books, the same pictures, the furniture just as ever—I had to sit down a long time to collect my thoughts and remember what had happened. I could remember it well enough, but to realize it was very hard. And then, when I went to the window and looked out and saw the meeting-house and the school-house and the neighbours' houses, just where I have seen them from that window all my life since I was a baby, I had to sit down and think it all over, again before I could believe that I was not in Hilton, and last night all a dream."
She spoke in a low, even tone, which was so evidently the result of an effort at self-control, that it impressed Paul more than any display of mental perturbation would have done.
At this moment Miss Ludington appeared on the piazza with a white, excited face, which, however, as soon as she saw Ida, became all smiles.
She had scarcely slept at all. The thought had kept her awake that Ida might vanish as mysteriously as she had come, and be gone at morning. From sheer weariness, however, she had at last fallen into a doze. On awaking she had gone to call Ida, and finding her chamber empty, had hurried downstairs full of apprehension.
Immediately after breakfast, Miss Ludington, to whom Ellen's mistake, if mistake it could be called, had been related, took Ida upstairs, and made her exchange her white dress of the fashion of half a century before for one of her own, in order that her appearance might excite less remark among the servants pending the obtaining of a suitable wardrobe from the city.
There was another consideration which made the change of costume not only desirable, but necessary.
Ida's dress, which had not seemed the night before, to casual examination, to differ from other cloth, had begun to crumble away in a very curious manner. The texture seemed strangely brittle and strengthless. It fell apart at a touch, and was reduced to a fine powder under the pressure of the fingers. She could not possibly have worn it even one day.
The dress of Miss Ludington's, for which she exchanged it, had been made for that lady when considerably stouter than at present, but was with difficulty enlarged sufficiently for the full figure of the girl. Like all but the latest of Miss Ludington's dresses, it was of deepest black, and, strikingly beautiful as Ida had been in white, the funereal hue set off the delicacy of her complexion, the pure expression of her face, and the golden lustre of her hair, like fresh revelations.
Paul was left pretty much to himself during the day. A large part of it was spent by the ladies in an upstairs chamber, which Miss Ludington had devoted to a collection of mementoes of the successive periods of her life from infancy.
"Come," she had said to Ida, "I want to introduce you to the rest of the family. I want to make you acquainted with the other Miss Ludingtons who have borne the name between your time and mine."