Jessie blushed with pleasure, and began to mellow a delicate slice of toast with the silver knife that lay beside it, making a parade of her efforts, which she evidently hoped would entice her mother's appetite: and so it did. I am sure no one besides her could have tempted that frail woman to eat a mouthful. As it was, one of the birds that was picking seeds from the terrace could almost have rivalled her appetite: the presence of her daughter, I fancy, gave her more strength than anything else. "So you have had a bad night, my mother," said Jessie, tenderly; "once or twice I awoke and felt that you did not sleep." "Indeed!" said the mother, with an earnest look breaking through the heaviness of her eyes. "Yes, indeed; but then I never wake in the night without wondering if you sleep well." "Did you see me?" questioned the mother, anxiously. "See you, mother?" Mrs. Lee smiled faintly, and shook her head as if to cast off some strange thought. "Of course, it was impossible. I must have slept long enough to dream; but it seems to me as if I was in your room last night. Something called me there, a faint, white shadow, that sometimes took the outline of an angel, sometimes floated before me like a cloud." "Oh, my good mother! it was kind to come, even in your dreams," said Jessie, kissing the little hand that lay in hers. Mrs. Lee looked troubled, and seemed to be searching her memory for something. "It took me--the cloud-angel--you know, into the blue room." "The blue room!" Jessie and I exclaimed together, for that was the apartment in which Mrs. Dennison slept, though the fact had never been mentioned to Mrs. Lee, and another chamber had at first been intended for our guest. "The blue room?" "Yes, the blue room!" she said; "but like all dreams, nothing was like the reality. Instead of the enamelled furniture, everything was covered with the prettiest blue chintz, with a wild-rose pattern running over it." Jessie and I looked at each other in consternation, for the furniture which Mrs. Lee described as familiar to the blue room had been removed to the chamber we had first intended for Mrs. Dennison, and that with which we had replaced it being too rich for a sleeping-room, we had covered it with the pretty chintz, without mentioning the fact to Mrs. Lee or any one else. "There was a toilet instead of the dressing-table, I remember," continued the lady, "with quantities of frost-like lace falling around it and on it; with other things, a little basket, prettier than mine, full of mossrose-buds." "Was there nothing else in the basket?" I questioned, holding my breath for the reply. "Nothing else," answered the lady, smiling; "oh! yes, combs and hair-pins, rings and bracelets, the whole toilet was in a glitter." "But nothing else in the basket?" I persisted. "No; rose-buds--mossrose-buds, red and white. Nothing more," she answered, languidly.