But the scene impressed her sharply, and she carried away a very lively picture of it.  The old Roman villa had been built about a hollow square open to the sky, and this square now formed the great hall of Bayfield.  Deep galleries of two stories surrounded it, in place of the old colonnaded walk.  Out of these opened the principal rooms of the house, and above them, upon a circular lantern of clear glass, was arched a painted dome.  Sheathed on the outside with green weather-tinted copper, and surmounted by a gilt ball, this dome (which could be seen from the Axcester High Street when winter stripped the Bayfield elms) gave the building something of the appearance of an observatory.

On the north side of the hall a broad staircase descended from the gallery to the tiled floor, in the midst of which a fountain played beneath a cupola supported by slender columns.  On the west the recess beneath the gallery had been deepened to admit a truly ample fireplace, with a flat hearthstone and andirons.  Here were screens and rich Turkey rugs, and here the Bayfield household ordinarily had the lamps set after dinner and gathered before the fire, talking little, enjoying the long pauses filled with the hiss of logs and the monotonous drip and trickle of water in the penumbra.

To-day the prisoners—­two hundred in all—­crowded the floor, the stairs, even the deep gallery above; but on the south side, facing the staircase, two heavy curtains had been looped back from the atrium, and there a ray of wintry sunshine fell through the glass roof upon the famous Bayfield pavement and the figure of Narcissus gravely expounding it.

He had reached his peroration, and Dorothea, who knew every word of it by heart, was on the alert.  At its close the audience held their breath for a second or two and then—­satisfied, as their hostess rose, that he had really come to an end—­tendered their applause, and, breaking into promiscuous chatter, trooped towards the tea-room.  Narcissus lingered, with bent head, oblivious, silently repeating the last well-worn sentences while he conned his beloved tessellae.

A voice aroused him from his brown study; he looked up, to find the hall deserted and M. Raoul standing at his elbow.

“Will you remember your promise, Monsieur, and allow me to examine a little more closely?  Ah, but it is wonderful!  That Pentheus!  And the Maenad there, carrying the torn limb!  Also the border of vine-leaves and crossed thyrsi; though that, to be sure, is usual enough.  And this next?  Ah, I remember—­’Tu cum parentis regna per arduum’; but what a devil of a design!  And, above all, what mellowness!  You will, I know, pardon the enthusiasm of one who comes from the Provence, a few miles out of Arles, and whose mother’s family boasts itself to be descended from Roman colonists.”

Narcissus beamed.

“To you then, M. Raoul, after your Forum and famous Amphitheatre, our pavement must seem a poor trifle—­though it by no means exhausts our list of interesting remains.  The praefurnium, for instance; I must show you our praefurnium.”