The Admiral seemed to meet her eyes with an effort.  He put out a hand.

“It is not good, Mademoiselle, that a man should pity himself.  Beware how you teach that; beware how you listen to him then.”

He turned from her abruptly and tottered away.  Glancing aside, she met the Vicomte de Tocqueville’s tired smile; he was using his cane to prod the butcher and recall his attention to the half-cut steak.  But the butcher continued to stare down the street.

“Eh?  But, dear me, it sounds like an emeute,” said the Vicomte, negligently; at the same time stepping to Dorothea’s side.

The murmur of the crowd in front of “The Dogs” had been swelling, and now broke into sharp, angry cries for a moment; then settled into a dull roar, and rose in a hoarse crescendo.  The mail coach was evidently not the centre of disturbance, though Dorothea could see its driver waving his arm and gesticulating from the box.  The noise came ahead of it, some twenty yards lower down the hill, where the street had suddenly grown black with people pressing and swaying.

“There seems no danger here, whatever it is,” said the Vicomte, glancing up at the house-front above.

“Please go and see what is the matter.  I am safe enough,” Dorothea assured him.  “The folks in the house will give me shelter, if necessary.”

The Vicomte lifted his hat.  “I will return and report promptly, if the affair be serious.”

But it was not serious.  The tumult died down, and Dorothea with her riding-switch was guarding the half-cut steak from a predatory dog when the Vicomte and the butcher returned together.

“Reassure yourself, Miss Westcote,” said M. de Tocqueville.  “There has been no bloodshed, though bloodshed was challenged.  It appears that almost as the coach drew up there arrived from the westward a post-chaise conveying a young naval officer from Plymouth, with despatches and (I regret to tell it) a flag.  His Britannic Majesty has captured another of our frigates; and the high spirited young gentleman was making the most of it in all innocence, and without an idea that his triumph could offend anyone in Axcester.  Unfortunately, on his way up the street, he waved the captured tricolor under the nose of your brother’s protege, M. Raoul—­”

“M.  Raoul!” Dorothea caught her breath on the name.

“And M. Raoul leapt into the chaise, then and there wrested the flag from him—­the more easily no doubt because he expected nothing so little and holding it aloft, challenged him to mortal combat.  Theatrically, and apart from the taste of it (I report only from hearsay), the coup must have been immensely successful.  When I arrived, your brother was restoring peace, the young Briton holding out his hand—­swearing he was sorry, begad! but how the deuce was he to have known ?—­and M. Raoul saving the situation, and still demanding blood with a face as long as an Alexandrine: