The “Dogs Inn” took its name from two stone greyhounds beside its porch—­ supporters of the arms of that old family from which the Westcotes had purchased Bayfield; and the Orange Room from a tradition that William of Orange had spent a night there on his march from Torbay.  There may have been truth in the tradition; the room at any rate preserved in it window-hangings of orange-yellow, and a deep fringe of the same hue festooning the musicians’ gallery.  While serving Axcester for ball, rout, and general assembly-room, it had been admittedly dismal—­its slate-coloured walls scarred and patched with new plaster, and relieved only by a gigantic painting of the Royal Arms on panel in a blackened frame; its ceiling garnished with four pendants in plaster, like bride-cake ornaments inverted.

To-day, as she stepped across the threshold, Dorothea hesitated between stopping her ears and rubbing her eyes.  The place was a Babel.  Frenchmen in white paper caps and stained linen blouses were laughing, plying their brushes, mixing paints, shifting ladders, and jabbering all the while at the pitch of their voices.  For a moment the din bewildered her; the ferment had no more meaning, no more method, than a schoolboy’s game.  But her eyes, passing over the chaos of paint-pots, brushes, and step-ladders, told her the place had been transformed.  The ceiling between the four pendants had become a blue heaven with filmy clouds, and Cupids scattering roses before a train of doves and a recumbent goddess, whom a little Italian, perched on a scaffolding and whistling shrilly, was varnishing for dear life.  Around the walls—­ sky-blue also—­trellises of vines and pink roses clambered around the old panels.  The energy of the workmen had passed into their paintings, or perhaps Dorothea’s head swam; at any rate, the cupids and doves seemed to be whirling across the ceiling, the vines, and roses mounting towards it, and pushing out shoots and tendrils while they climbed.

But the panels themselves!  They were nine in all:  three down the long black wall, two narrower ones at the far end, four between the orange-curtained windows looking on the street. (The fourth wall had no panel, being covered, by the musicians’ gallery and the pillars supporting it.) In each, framed by the vines and roses, glowed a scene of classical or pseudo-classical splendour; golden sunsets, pale yellow skies, landscapes cleverly imitated from recollections of Claude Lorraine, dotted with temples and small figures in flowing drapery, with here and there a glimpse of naked limbs.  Here were Bacchus and Ariadne, with a company of dancing revellers; Apollo and Marsyas; the Rape of Helen; Dido welcoming Aeneas. . . .  Dorothea (albeit she had often glanced into the copy of M. Lempriere’s Classical Dictionary in her brother’s library, and, besides, had picked up something of Greek and Roman mythology in helping Narcissus) did not at once discriminate the subjects of these panels, but her eyes rested on them with a pleasant sense of recognition, and were still resting on them when she heard General Rochambeau say: