In numb obedience Callie sat before the mirror and turned her head from side to side as Hermey held up the feathers. She ate the slices of buttered bread and drank some wine without protest. She allowed Anne and her sister to dress her in the costume that the maid had created by cutting up two of Hermey's overgowns, then swath her with spangles and the blue and green gauze. Below a shortened hem, her ankles were covered by a pair of puffy silken panta loons drawn up with ribbons, and Hermey had tied tiny bells to her slippers.

It was only when her sister, reaching for some pins, instead accidentally swept a folded note out of a dish on her dressing table, that Callie awakened from her deadened state and made a sudden move. "That's nothing," she said quickly. "I'll take it." She held out her hand for the oddly shaped paper.

Hermey had been about to toss the note aside, but she paused then, a teasing expression on her lips. "What is it? Are you keeping secrets?"

"No," Callie said, with too much emphasis.

Hermey giggled. "Well, it's a night for secrets, is it not? A masquerade." She held the note just out of Callie's reach. "Is it from the major?"

"No, it is not," she retorted, realizing that she had made a grave tactical error by drawing any attention to the paper at all. She turned back to the mirror. "This plume is drooping," she said, pulling it out of the turban Anne had wrapped about her hair. "I look like Mrs. Farr's cockatoo after a disorderly night on the town."

Hermey made as if to unfold the note, and Callie grabbed for it. She managed to seize it from her sister's hand, but then there was no escape. She felt herself blushing fiercely as Hermey and Anne both stared at her.

"I heard a whisper about something," Hermey said with a smirk.

Callie felt her heart go to her feet. She glanced at Anne, saw the maid bite her lower lip, and suddenly knew that the servants had been talking. Her mouth went dry. She gripped the note in her hand and turned away.

"Callie?" The bantering tone left her sister's voice, replaced by wonder, as if before she had only been teasing but now she saw more than she had expected in Callie's reaction.

"I'd like to take my nap now," Callie said.

"You can't lie down now that you're dressed," Hermey pointed out, "or you will look like a demented parrot. You should have rested earlier. What have you been doing in here all afternoon?" she demanded.

"Merely watching the rain and reading a little." Callie plucked all the feathers from her headdress. "I'll come to your room in a little while, and you can put them in again. I only want to doze for a few minutes first, to refresh myself."