I could scarcely sleep that night for eagerness and anticipation. Ever since the afternoon when the vision of Miss Dudley appeared, to startle me from my painting, in the little south parlor, she had been the foremost figure in my brightest day-dreams, as often as, with little Philip warm and slumberous on my knees, I could find time for day-dreams. Accordingly, I had been more than wishing—longing—to see her again; though I put off returning her visit, partly from real want of time, partly from uncertainty about what was the proper etiquette for me, and partly from the dread of dispelling some pleasant illusions, and finding that the Miss Dudley of my reveries belonged to the realm of my imagination rather than to that of my memory. I dreamed of her all that night, when I was not lying awake to think of her; and when, in the morning, I arose early to brush and brighten my somewhat faded black, the keen autumn air, instead of chilling me, seemed but to whet and sharpen my zest for my expedition.
Julia's toilet was not made when I heard the clatter of the recalcitrant De Quincey backing the chaise out of his beloved, but little be-lived in, stable. She sat up in bed, however, when I went in to kiss her, in spite of Mrs. Rocket, turned me round to the window to see whether I was looking my best, or, as she equivocally phrased it, "the best of which I was capable," told me, that I had got a little rouge the last time I was out, and must ask Miss Dudley whether it was not becoming, and hooked her forefingers into my naturally gekräuseltes hair, to pull it into what she always maintained to be the proper pose above my eyebrows.
Then down I ran, and off I went, through the town and along the road, between rocks and evergreens with here and there a gate among them that marked the entrance to the earthly paradise of some lucky gentleman.
"Sha'n't we be too early?" asked I, fidgeting, for my prosperity appeared to me, just now, too perfect to be permanent.
"No," said the Doctor. "They are early people at Barberry Beach,—not Sybarites in anything, so far as I can judge. It is near nine. Miss Dudley tells me I shall almost always find her visible by that time. If, not hearing from you, she has made other engagements, you know she is more likely to be at leisure now than later."
"She does not look well yet. What was the matter with her?"
"Angina pectoris. That is Greek to you, Katy. Pain in the heart, then."
"What made her have it?"
"That is a deep question in the most interesting of sciences,—that of the metamorphoses of diseases. Many men would answer it according to their many minds. To the best of my belief, the cause of Miss Dudley's having a pain in her heart lay in her great-grandfather's toe."
"O Doctor! what do you mean?"