Most of the rooms in the wings are used for the kitchens and other servants’ quarters; but one large chamber is devoted to a special purpose of the general’s own: it is a museum; the Curiosity-Room, he calls it. It is lighted by two windows opening on opposite sides, one on the court-yard, the other on an orange grove at the south end of the house. Besides being, in itself, a cool and pleasant spot, it is full of interest to any one who cares about the relics and antiquities of an ancient and vanishing race, concerning whom little is or ever will be known. There are two students in it at this moment; though whether they are studying antiquities is another matter. Let us give ear to their discourse and be instructed.
“But this was made for you to wear, Miss Trednoke. Try it. It fits you perfectly, you see. There can be no doubt about your being a princess, now!”
“I sometimes feel it,--here!” she said, putting her hand on her bosom. She was looking at him as she said it, but her eyes, instead of any longer meeting his, seemed to turn their regard inward, and to traverse strange regions, not of this world. “I see some one who is myself, though I can never have been she: she is surrounded with brightness, and people not like ours; she thinks of things that I have never known. It is the memory of a dream, I suppose,” she added, in another tone.
“Heredity is a queer thing. You may be Aztecan over again, in mind and temperament; and every one knows how impressions are transmitted. If features and traits of character, why not particular thoughts and feelings?”
“I think it is better not to try to explain these things,” said she, with the unconscious haughtiness which maidens acquire who have not seen the world and are adored by their family. “They are great mysteries,--or else nothing.” She now removed from her head the curious cap or helmet, ornamented with gold and with the green feathers of the humming-bird, which her companion had crowned her with, and hung it on its nail in the cabinet. “Perhaps the thoughts came with the cap,” she remarked, smiling slightly. “I don’t feel that way any more. I ought not to have spoken of it.”
“I hope the time will come when you will feel that you may trust me.”