bottom that reflected the polish of scrupulous care.
Dolores stifled her surprise, and moved toward the heavy velvet hangings
which still barred her way. These, too, were swept aside with no visible
effort, and the girl stood on the threshold of the chamber of mystery.

CHAPTER II.

DOLORES RECEIVES HER DIADEM.

In a great canopied bed, taken from some rich looted Indiaman, Red Jabez
lay motionless as an effigy in stone. His tall, powerful body was
sharply outlined in coverings of silk and rare lace; the arms and crest
of a ducal house were worked into the pillows that supported his massive
head. His drawn, haggard face was surrounded and all but covered with a
great mane of vivid red hair; his silken shirt, wide open at the neck,
revealed a massive chest, whose tide of respiration had all but ceased
to run. Only his eyes, fierce yet, held token of lingering life; it was
as if the vital spark was concentrated into one final blaze of
tremendous brilliancy.

The fierce eyes moved swiftly at Dolores's entrance, and one might have
said a film of tenderness swept for an instant over the hard glint in
them. It was gone as swiftly as it came, and the stare settled
unwaveringly upon the stupefied girl. For stupefaction had gripped
Dolores in that first entry into the great chamber. Her wildest dreams,
and they had been at times fantastic, had never showed her anything
measurably approaching the scene that smote her eyes now. For the moment
death, Red Jabez, her destiny, everything melted into the visionary
beyond and left her capable of no volition.

The great bed stood in the center of a vast cavern; sides, roof, floor,
every inch of the rock itself bore proof of the handiwork of hundreds of
cunning craftsmen; but the furnishings filled Dolores's eyes to the
exclusion of all else. Divans and chairs, cabinets and tables carried
the mind far away to the realm of emperors and kings; vases from China
and Greece stood on stands of boule-work; a tall ebony-and-ivory
clock-case, in which ticked sonorously a masterpiece of Peter Hele,
stood between two gorgeous pieces of Gobelin tapestry. And around her
and above, Dolores's amazed eyes lighted upon gems of the painter's art
such as few collections might boast. The entire ceiling was covered with
a colossal "Battle of the Amazons," by Rubens, each figure thrown out in
startling distinctness, full of voluptuous life and action; the walls
were mantled by vast golden frames