He said it quietly, over his shoulder. The sudden challenge, her sudden
discovery that he knew, made Dorothea gasp. She had not the smallest
notion how to answer him, or even what kind of answer he expected, and
stood dumb, gazing at his back. A workman, passing, apologised for
having brushed her skirt with the step-ladder he carried. She stammered
some words of pardon. And just then, to her relief, her brother
Endymion's voice rang out from the doorway:
"Ah, there you are. Well, I declare!" He looked around him. "A
Paradise, a perfect Paradise! Indeed, General, your nation has its
revenge of us in the arts. You build a temple for us, and on Wednesday
I hear you are to provide the music. Tum-tum, ta-ta-ta . . ." He hummed
a few bars of Gluck's "Paride ed Elenna," and paused, with the gesture
of one holding a fiddle, on the verge of a reminiscence. "There was a
time--but I no longer compete. And to whom, General, are we indebted
for this--ah--treat?"
General Rochambeau indicated young Raoul, who stepped forward from the
wall and answered, with a respectful inclination:
"Well, M. le Commissaire, in the first place to Captain Seymour."
The General bit his moustache; Endymion frowned. The answer merely
puzzled Dorothea, who did not know that Seymour was the name of the
British officer to whom the _Thetis_ had struck her colours.
"Moreover," the young man went on imperturbably, "we but repay our
debt to M.
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