So passed the day. Dumb Antoine alone appeared; but from his grimaces nothing could be gathered. Night came on, and with it sleep, but a sleep disturbed by more than one dream of a fair face, with dark-blue eyes and lashes black and long, deep thoughtful glances and alluring smiles.
At last there came a sound that roused the dreamer; a ray of light flashed through the parted arras from another room.
"She comes!" was the first thought of Florence. "At this hour, impossible!" was the second.
There was a light step. Dawn was just breaking; but the good folks of that age were ever afoot betimes. At last the arras was parted boldly, and Master Posset, bearing a lamp, with his long silvery beard glittering over the front of his black serge gown, which hung in wavy folds to his feet, approached, bearing on a silver salver the patient's usual breakfast of weak hippocras, with maccaroon biscuits. He felt the youth's pulse, looked anxiously at his eyes and wounds, pronounced him infinitely better, and added that he "might on this day leave his couch."
"And the ladies?" asked Florence, unable to restrain his curiosity longer.
"What ladies?" queried the discreet Master Posset.
"Those who for so many days have watched my pillow like sisters—the hazel-eyed and the blue-eyed—for, alas! I know not their names. Where were they all yesterday, and where are they to-day?"
"Gone!"
"Gone!" faintly echoed Florence;—"but whither?"
"To Stirling."