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 volume as the pair crossed the great hall beneath the dome.  Then she turned the handle of the library door, and was instantly deafened by the babel within.

The guests took their departure a little before sunset.  M. Raoul was not among the long train which shook hands with her and filed down the avenue at the heels of M. de Tocqueville and General Rochambeau.  Twenty minutes later, while the servants were setting the hall in order, she heard her brother’s voice beneath the window of her boudoir, explaining the system on which the Romans warmed their houses.

She had picked up a religious book, but found herself unable to fix her attention upon it or even to sit still.  Her hand still burned where M. Raoul’s lips had touched it.  She recalled Endymion’s prophecy that these entertainments would throw the domestic mechanism—­always more delicately poised on Sundays than on weekdays—­completely oft its pivot.  She had pledged herself to prevent this, and had made a private appeal to the maidservants with whose Sunday-out they interfered.  They had responded loyally.

Still, this was the first experiment; she would go down to the hall again and make sure that the couches were in position, the cushions shaken up, the pot-plants placed around the fountain so accurately that Endymion’s nice eye for small comforts could detect no excuse for saying, “I told you so.”

As she passed along the gallery her eyes sought the pillar beside which M. Raoul had stood during the lecture.  By the foot of it a book lay face downwards—­a book cheaply bound between boards of mottled paper.  She picked it up and read the title; it was a volume of Rousseau’s Confessions—­a book of which she remembered to have heard.  On the flyleaf was written the owner’s name in full—­“Charles Marie Fabien de Raoul.”

Dorothea hurried downstairs with it and past the servants tidying the hall.

She looked to find M. Raoul still buttonholed and held captive by Narcissus at the eastern angle of the house.  But before she reached the front door she happened—­though perhaps it was not quite accidental—­ to throw a glance through the window by which he had stood and talked with her, and saw him striding away down the avenue in the dusk.

She returned to her room and summoned Polly.