The weather since Dorothea's visit to the Orange Room had included a
frost, a fall of snow with a partial thaw, and a second and much
severer frost; and by Wednesday afternoon the hill below Bayfield wore
a hard and slippery glaze. Endymion, however, had seen to the roughing
of the horses. Thin powdery snow began to fall as the Bayfield barouche
rolled past the gates into the high road; and Narcissus, who considered
himself a weather-prophet, foretold a thaw before morning. Unless the
weather grew worse, the party would drive back to Bayfield; but the old
caretaker in the Town House had orders to light fires there and prepare
the bedrooms, and on the chance of being detained. Dorothea had brought
her maid Polly.
In spite of her previous visit, the Orange Room gave her a shock of
delight and wonder. The litter had vanished, the hangings were in
place; fresh orange-coloured curtains divided the dancing-floor from
the recess beneath the gallery, and this had been furnished as a
withdrawing-room, with rugs, settees, groups of green foliage plants,
and candles, the light of which shone through shades of yellow paper.
The prisoners, too, had adorned with varicoloured paperwork the
candelabra, girandoles and mirrors which drew twinkles from the long
waxed floor, and softened whatever might have been garish in the
decorations. Certainly the panels took a new beauty, a luminous
delicacy, in their artificial rays; and Dorothea, when, after much
greeting and hand-shaking, she joined one of the groups inspecting
them, felt a sort of proprietary pleasure in the praises she heard.
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