CORPORAL ZEALLY INTERVENES Dorothea sat in the great hall of Bayfield, between the lamplight and the moonlight, listening to the drip of the fountain beneath its tiny cupola.

A midsummer moon-ray fell through the uncurtained lantern beneath the dome and spread in a small pool of silver at her feet.
Beneath one of the two shaded lamps Endymion lounged in his armchair and read the Sherborne Mercury.

Narcissus had carried off the other to a table across the hall by the long bookcase, and above the pot-plants banked about the fountain she saw it shining on his shapely grey head as he bent over a copy of the Antonine Itinerary and patiently worked out a new theory of its distances.

Her own face rested in deep shadow, and she felt grateful for it as she leaned back thinking her own thoughts.

It was a whole week now since Charles had visited Bayfield, but she had encountered him that morning in Axcester High Street as she passed up it on horseback with her brothers.