"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.
Folks no longer smile at sentiment. They laugh it down: by which, perhaps, no great harm would be done if their laughter came through the mind; but it comes through the passions, and at the best chastises one excess by another—a weakness by a rage, which is weakness at its worst. I fear Dorothea may be injured in the opinion of many by the truth—which, nevertheless, has to be told—that her recovery was helped not a little by sentiment. What? Is a poor lady's heart to be in combustion for a while and then—pf!—the flame expelled at a blast, with all that fed it? That is the heroic cure, no doubt: but either it kills or leaves a room swept and garnished, inviting devils. In short it is the way of tragedy, and for tragedy Dorothea had no aptitude at all. She did what she could—tidied up.