Nurse Swift said that Amy must go to bed at once, and have a long rest.
But Amy nearly wept at the proposal, and declared that she was not a bit tired and couldn't sleep if she went to bed ever so much.
The change of air had done her good already, and she looked more like herself than for many weeks past.
They compromised their dispute on a sofa, where Amy, well wrapped up, was laid, and where, in spite of her protestations, she presently fell asleep, leaving the others free to examine and arrange their new quarters.
Such enormous rooms as they were!
It was quite a journey to go from one side of them to another.
The floors were of stone, with squares of carpet laid down over them, which looked absurdly small for the great spaces they were supposed to cover.
The beds and tables were of the usual size, but they seemed almost like doll furniture because the chambers were so big.
A quaint old paper, with an enormous pattern of banyan trees and pagodas, covered the walls, and every now and then betrayed by an oblong of regular cracks the existence of a hidden door, papered to look exactly like the rest of the wall.
These mysterious doors made Katy nervous, and she never rested till she had opened every one of them and explored the places they led to.
One gave access to a queer little bathroom.
Another led, through a narrow dark passage, to a sort of balcony or loggia overhanging the garden.
A third ended in a dusty closet with an artful chink in it from which you could peep into what had been the Bishop's drawing-room but which was now turned into the dining-room of the hotel.
It seemed made for purposes of espial; and Katy had visions of a long line of reverend prelates with their ears glued to the chink, overhearing what was being said about them in the apartment beyond.
The most surprising of all she did not discover till she was going to bed on the second night after their arrival, when she thought she knew all about the mysterious doors and what they led to.
A little unexplained draught of wind made her candle flicker, and betrayed the existence of still another door so cunningly hid in the wall pattern that she had failed to notice it.
She had quite a creepy feeling as she drew her dressing-gown about her, took a light, and entered the narrow passage into which it opened.
It was not a long passage, and ended presently in a tiny oratory. There was a little marble altar, with a kneeling-step and candlesticks and a great crucifix above.
Ends of wax candles still remained in the candlesticks, and bunches of dusty paper flowers filled the vases which stood on either side of them.
A faded silk cushion lay on the step.
Doubtless the Bishop had often knelt there.
Katy felt as if she were the first person to enter the place since he went away.
Her common-sense told her that in a hotel bedroom constantly occupied by strangers for years past, some one must have discovered the door and found the little oratory before her; but common-sense is sometimes less satisfactory than romance.
Katy liked to think that she was the first, and to "make believe" that no one else knew about it; so she did so, and invented legends about the place which Amy considered better than any fairy story.
Before he left them Lieutenant Worthington had a talk with his sister in the garden.
She rather forced this talk upon him, for various things were lying at her heart about which she longed for explanation; but he yielded so easily to her wiles that it was evident he was not averse to the idea.
"Come, Polly, don't beat about the bush any longer," he said at last, amused and a little irritated at her half-hints and little feminine finesses.
"I know what you want to ask; and as there's no use making a secret of it, I will take my turn in asking. Have I any chance, do you think?"
"Any chance?—about Katy, do you mean?
Oh, Ned, you make me so happy."
"Yes; about her, of course."
"I don't see why you should say 'of course,'" remarked his sister, with the perversity of her sex, "when it's only five or six weeks ago that I was lying awake at night for fear you were being gobbled up by that Lilly Page."
"There was a little risk of it," replied her brother, seriously.
"She's awfully pretty and she dances beautifully, and the other fellows were all wild about her, and—well, you know yourself how such things go.
I can't see now what it was that I fancied so much about her, I don't suppose I could have told exactly at the time; but I can tell without the smallest trouble what it is in—the other."
"In Katy?
I should think so," cried Mrs. Ashe, emphatically; "the two are no more to be compared than—than—well, bread and syllabub!
You can live on one, and you can't live on the other."
"Come, now, Miss Page isn't so bad as that.
She is a nice girl enough, and a pretty girl too,—prettier than Katy; I'm not so far gone that I can't see that.
But we won't talk about her, she's not in the present question at all; very likely she'd have had nothing to say to me in any case.
I was only one out of a dozen, and she never gave me reason to suppose that she cared more for me than the rest.
Let us talk about this friend of yours; have I any chance at all, do you think, Polly?"
"Ned, you are the dearest boy!
I would rather have Katy for a sister than any one else I know.
She's so nice all through,—so true and sweet and satisfactory."
"She is all that and more; she's a woman to tie to for life, to be perfectly sure of always.
She would make a splendid wife for any man.
I'm not half good enough for her; but the question is,—and you haven't answered it yet, Polly,—what's my chance?"
"I don't know," said his sister, slowly.