"Mila," he said, seeing that his sister was already up and dressed, "you have cheerful and poetic ideas, I see, despite our anxieties and dangers. These flowers are almost as lovely as you; but they can never replace the one I have lost." "You imagined," she said, "that I had taken it or tipped over the glass after your extraordinary friend went away; you almost scolded me, and you refused to remember that I had never so much as thought of putting my foot inside your _mysterious_ chamber! Now, you accuse me of replacing it with others, which is no less absurd; for where could I have got them? Am I not barricaded on the gallery side? Haven't you my key under your pillow? Unless, indeed, these pretty little flowers grow on my pillow, which is possible--in a dream." "Mila, you persist in jesting on all subjects and at all seasons. You may have had this bouquet last night. Weren't you at Villa Palmarosa in the afternoon?" "For heaven's sake, don't these flowers grow anywhere but in Princess Agatha's boudoir? I understand now why you are so fond of them. Where, pray, did you pick the one that you looked for so long this morning, instead of going straight to bed?" "I picked it in my hair, little one, and I believe that my brains left my head with it." "Ah! very good; now I understand why you talk nonsense." Michel could find out nothing more. Mila was as calm and smiling when she woke as she had been disturbed and fearful when she fell asleep. He obtained nothing from her but quips of the sort in which she was proficient, always possessed of some metaphorical meaning, and instinct with a sort of childish charm. She asked him for the key of her room, and while he was dressing, lost in thought, she attended to her household duties with her usual activity and lightness of heart. She flew about the corridors and stairways, singing like the morning lark. Michel, as melancholy as the winter sun on the ice-fields at the pole, heard the floors creaking under her agile feet, heard her merry laugh as she received her father's kiss on the floor below, heard her ascend the stairs to her room, like a well-aimed arrow, then go down again to the fountain to fill the graceful earthen jugs, which are made at Siacca, after Moorish models, and are commonly used by the people of those regions; heard her salute the neighbors with kindly pleasantries, and play with the half naked children who were already beginning to roll about on the flagstones in the yard. Pier-Angelo was also dressing, more rapidly and in more cheerful mood than Michel. Like Mila, he sang, but in a deeper and more martial voice, as he shook his brown, red-lined jacket. He was interrupted at times by a lingering remnant of drowsiness, and yawned over the words of his ballads, then finished the refrain triumphantly. That was his way of waking, and he never sang better, in his own ears, than when his voice failed him.