"He did not consider."

"Dear Mademoiselle, your brother is an excellent fellow, and not a bit
more popular than he deserves to be. Of his kindness to us prisoners--
I speak not of us privileged ones, but of our poorer brothers--I
could name a thousand acts; and acts say more than words."

Dorothea pursed her lips. "I am not sure. I think a woman would ask for
words too."

"Yes, that is so," he caught her up. "But don't you see that we
prisoners are--forgive me--just like women? I mean, we have learned
that we are weak. For a man that is no easy lesson, Mademoiselle. I
myself learned it hardly. And seeing your brother admired by all, so
strong and prosperous and confident, can I ask that he should feel as
we who have forfeited these things?"

Before she could find a reply he had harked back to the Orange Room.

"You have not seen it since the decorations began? Then I have a mind
to run and ask your brother to forbid your coming--to command you to
wait until Wednesday. We are in a horrible mess, I warn you, and smell
of turpentine most potently. But we shall be ready for the ball, and
then--! It will be prodigious. You do not know that we have a genius
at work on the painting?"

"My brother tells me the designs are extraordinarily clever."

"They are more than clever, you will allow. The artist I discovered
myself--a young man named Charles Raoul. He comes from the South, a