understand how a man feels; how even so unimportant a creature as I
must bear a sort of personal grudge against his fate."

"I am trying to understand," said Dorothea, gently.

"But this you can understand, how a prisoner loves the sunshine: not
because, through his grating, it warms him; but because it is the
sunshine, and he sees it. Mademoiselle, I am not grateful; I see
merely, and adore. Some day you shall pause by this window and see a
cloud of dust on the Fosse Way--the last of us prisoners as they march
us from Axcester to the place of our release; and, seeing it, you shall
close the book upon a chapter, but not without remembering"--he
touched her hand again, but now his fingers closed on it, and he raised
it to his lips,--"not without remembering how and when one Frenchman
said, 'God bless you, Mademoiselle Dorothea!'"

Dorothea's eyes were wet when, a moment later, Narcissus came bustling
through the atrium with a roll of papers in his hand.

"Ah, this is luck!" he cried. "I was starting to search for you."

He either assumed that they had visited the tea-room or forgot all
about it; and M. Raoul's look implored Dorothea not to explain.

"Suppose we take the _triclinium_ first, on the north side of the
house. That, sir, will tell you whether I am right or wrong about the
climate of those days. A summer parlour facing north, and with no
trace of heating-flues! . . ."

He led off his captive, and Dorothea heard his expository tones gather