Maddalena had to call her, just before dinner, when Mrs. Lander had been awake long enough to have sent for the doctor to explain the sort of gone feeling which she was now the victim of.  It proved, when he came, to be hunger, and he prescribed tea and toast and a small bit of steak.  Before he came she had wished to arrange for going home at once, and dying in her own country.  But his opinion so far prevailed with her that she consented not to telegraph for berths.  “I presume,” she said, “it’ll do, any time before the icebugs begin to run.  But I d’ know, afta this, Clementina, as I can let you leave me quite as you be’n doin’.  There was a lot of flowas come for you, this aftanoon, but I made Maddalena put ’em on the balcony, for I don’t want you should get poisoned with ’em in your sleep; I always head they was dangerous in a person’s ‘bed room.  I d’ know as they are, eitha.”

Maddalena seemed to know that Mrs. Lander was speaking of the flowers.  She got them and gave them to Clementina, who found they were from some of the men she had danced with.  Mr. Hinkle had sent a vast bunch of violets, which presently began to give out their sweetness in the warmth of the room, and the odor brought him before her with his yellow hair, scrupulously parted at the side, and smoothly brushed, showing his forehead very high up.  Most of the gentlemen wore their hair parted in the middle, or falling in a fringe over their brows; the Russian’s was too curly to part, and Lord Lioncourt had none except at the sides.

She laughed, and Mrs. Lander said, “Tell about it, Clementina,” and she began with Mr. Hinkle, and kept coming back to him from the others.  Mrs. Lander wished most to know how that lord had got down to Florence; and Clementina said he was coming to see her.

“Well, I hope to goodness he won’t come to-day, I a’n’t fit to see anybody.”

“Oh, I guess he won’t come till to-morrow,” said Clementina; she repeated some of the compliments she had got, and she told of all Miss Milray’s kindness to her, but Mrs. Lander said, “Well, the next time, I’ll thank her not to keep you so late.”  She was astonished to hear that Mr. Ewins was there, and “Any of the nasty things out of the hotel the’e?” she asked.

“Yes,” Clementina said, “the’e we’e, and some of them we’e very nice.  They wanted to know if I wouldn’t join them, and have an aftanoon of our own here in the hotel, so that people could come to us all at once.”

She went back to the party, and described the rest of it.  When she came to the part about the Russian, she told what he had said of American girls being fond of money, and wanting to marry foreign noblemen.

Mrs. Lander said, “Well, I hope you a’n’t a going to get married in a hurry, anyway, and when you do I hope you’ll pick out a nice American.”

“Oh, yes,” said Clementina.

Mrs. Lander had their dinner brought to their apartment.  She cheered up, and she was in some danger of eating too much, but with Clementina’s help she denied herself.  Their short evening was one of the gayest; Clementina declared she was not the least sleepy, but she went to bed at nine, and slept till nine the next day.