holding the best of Titian, Correggio
and Giorgione, Raphael and Ribera. And jewels flashed everywhere;
cunningly placed lamps, themselves encrusted with the reddest of rubies,
the subtlest of green emeralds, flooded walls and furnishings with a
soft yet searching light which seemed to be carefully calculated to
accentuate those things whose beauty demanded light, yet to leave the
eye unwearied.

"The hour has struck, my Sultana," said Milo anxiously, and Dolores
shook off the spell and approached the great bed. Red Jabez closed his
eyes as she leaned over him, and his lips now alone gave evidence of
life. The girl, reared among the wildest of desolate isolation, knowing
no softening ties of family, her impulses and emotions those of a
beautiful animal, and increasingly so because of her station among the
rabble that called the dying man chief, stared down at her terrible
parent without a trace of visible regret: rather in her eyes shone the
triumph of a victor about to enter upon a conquered kingdom. But the red
pirate was speaking, and she bent her ear to catch his words. It
required no physician's knowledge to perceive in his damp face all the
signs of imminent dissolution.

"Dolores, my traverse is run," whispered Jabez. The effort all but stole
his breath. He paused; then summoning all the tremendous will that had
dominated his frame when surging with strength, he told what he had to
say in short sentences, nursing the flickering spark to force his
speech. "Never leave here, girl. Let no man go, either. The world has
forgotten me and all of us; but memory is tenacious--it will revive at a
hint; every throat that pulses with hot life here--yes, my daughter,
even your fair throat--was measured years ago--a rope awaits every one.
But here--"

"Yes, father?" Dolores shivered in the pause; the silence chilled her.
The giant Abyssinian stood at the head of the bed, and now moistened the
dying lips with wine. Red Jabez strained convulsively, snatching at his
throat, and resumed with weaker voice.

"Here I have been king; here you are queen; all these things you see,
and many more, are yours; life and death are in your hands to give or
withhold. Keep the steel hand, though you wear the glove, Dolores. You
have learned power; with the greater power you take from this chamber,
and with Milo, let nothing, no man, stir your fears. Keep this chamber
as I have kept it; it is your strength; when danger threatens to beat
you