“… and what if he should discover two dragons – one red and one white – beneath the foundations of the house, locked in eternal struggle and symbolizing the future destruction of Mr Godesdone? I dare say,” said the man slyly, “you would not mind it if he did.”

She laughed again, even more merrily than before, and Mr Norrell was surprized to hear in the next instant someone address her as “Mrs Godesdone”.

Upon reflection Mr Norrell thought that he ought to have spoken to her but by then she was nowhere to be seen. He was sick of the noise and sight of so many people and determined to go quietly away, but it so happened that just at that moment the crowds about the door were particularly impenetrable; he was caught up in the current of people and carried away to quite another part of the room. Round and round he went like a dry leaf caught up in a drain; in one of these turns around the room he discovered a quiet corner near a window. A tall screen of carved ebony inlaid with mother-of-pearl half-hid – ah! what bliss was this! – a bookcase. Mr Norrell slipped behind the screen, took down John Napier’s A Plaine Discouverie of the Whole Revelation of St John and began to read.

He had not been there very long when, happening to glance up, he saw the tall, handsome man who had been speaking to Mrs Godesdone and the small, dark man who had gone to such trouble to destroy the matrimonial hopes of Captain Hurst. They were discoursing energetically, but the press and flow of people around them was so great that, without any ceremony, the tall man got hold of the small man’s sleeve and pulled him behind the screen and into the corner which Mr Norrell occupied.

“He is not here,” said the tall man, giving each word an emphasis with a poke of his finger in the other’s shoulder. “Where are the fiercely burning eyes that you promised us? Where the trances that none of us can explain? Has any one been cursed? – I do not think so. You have called him up like a spirit from the vasty deep, and he has not come.”

“I was with him only this morning,” said the small man defiantly, “to hear of the wonderful magic that he has been doing recently and he said then that he would come.”

“It is past midnight. He will not come now.” The tall man smiled a very superior smile. “Confess, you do not know him.”

Then the small man smiled in rivalry of the other’s smile (these two gentlemen positively jousted in smiles) and said, “No one in London knows him better. I shall confess that I am a little – a very little – disappointed.”

“Ha!” cried the tall man. “It is the opinion of the room that we have all been most abominably imposed upon. We came here in the expectation of seeing something very extraordinary, and instead we have been obliged to provide our own amusement.” His eye happening to light upon Mr Norrell, he said, “That gentleman is reading a book.”