The General pressed her hand gratefully.

“Ah, never pity him, Mademoiselle.  He carries a good pass for the Elysian Fields.”

“And that is—?”

“The Emperor’s tabatiere:  and, my faith!  Miss Dorothea, there will be sneezings in certain quarters when he opens it there.

  “Il a du bon tabac
   Dans sa tabatiere

“has the Admiral.  He had for you (if I may say it) a quite extraordinary respect and affection.  The saints rest his brave soul!”

The General lifted his tricorne.  He never understood the tide of red which surged over Dorothea’s face; but she conquered it, and went on to surprise him further: 

“I heard of this only last night.  We have been visiting Dartmoor, my brother and I, with a release for—­for that M. Raoul.”

“So I understood.”  He noted that her confusion had gone as suddenly as it came.

“But since I am back in time, and it appears I was so fortunate as to win his regard, I would ask to see him—­if it be permitted, and I may have your escort.”

“Certainly, Mademoiselle.  You will, perhaps, wish to consult your brother though?”

“I see no necessity,” she answered.

* * * * * * * * *

The General was not the only one to discover a new and firmer note in Dorothea’s voice.  Life at Bayfield slipped back into its old comfortable groove, but the brothers fell—­and one of them consciously—­into a habit of including her in their conversations and even of asking her advice.  One day there arrived a bulky parcel for Narcissus; so bulky indeed and so suspiciously heavy, that it bore signs of several agitated official inspections, and nothing short of official deference to Endymion (under cover of whom it was addressed) could account for its having come through at all.  For it came from France.  It contained a set of the Bayfield drawings exquisitely cut in stone; and within the cover was wrapped a lighter parcel addressed to Miss Dorothea Westcote—­a rose-tree, with a packet of seeds tied about its root.

No letter accompanied the gift, at the sentimentality of which she found herself able to smile.  But she soaked the root carefully in warm water, and smiled again at herself, as she planted it at the foot of the glacis beneath her boudoir window—­the very spot where Raoul had fallen.  Against expectation—­for the journey had sorely withered it—­ the plant throve.  She lived to see it grown into a fine Provence rose, draping the whole south-east corner of Bayfield with its yellow bloom.

“After all,” she said one afternoon, stepping back in the act of pruning it, “provided one sees things in their right light and is not a fool—­”

But this was long after the time of which we are telling.