olding her purple train
up lightly in one hand, stood at the foot of the throne, glancing at
them with her cold, haughty and beautiful eyes. In their wandering,
those same darkly-splendid eyes glanced and lighted on Sir Norman,
who, in a state of seeming stupor at the horrible scene he had just
witnessed, stood near the green table, and they sent a thrill through
him with their wonderful resemblance to Leoline's. So vividly alike were
they, that he half doubted for a moment whether she and Leoline were not
really one; but no--Leoline never could have had the cold, cruel heart
to stand and witness such a horrible sight. Miranda's dark, piercing
glance fell as haughtily and disdainfully on him as it had on the rest;
and his heart sank as he thought that whatever sympathy she had felt for
him was entirely gone. It might have been a whim, a woman's caprice, a
spirit of contradiction, that had induced her to defend him at first.
Whatever it was, and it mattered not now, it had completely vanished. No
face of marble could have been colder, or stonier, or harder, than hers,
as she looked at him out of the depths of her great dark eyes; and with
that look, his last lingering hope of life vanished.

"And now for the next trial!" exclaimed the dwarf, briskly breaking in
upon his drab-colored meditations, and bustling past. "We will get it
over at once, and have done with it!"

"You will do no such thing!" said the imperious voice of the queenly
shrew. "We will have neither trials nor anything else until after
supper, which has already been delayed four full minutes. My lord
chamberlain, have the goodness to step in and see that all is in order."

One of the gilded and decorated gentlemen whom sir Norman had mistaken
for ambassadors stepped off, in obedience, through another opening in
the tapestry--which seemed to be as extensively undermined with such
apertures as a cabman's coat with capes--and, while he was gone, the
queen stood drawn up to her full height, with her scornful face looking
down on the dwarf. That small man knit up his very plain face into a
bristle of the sourest kinks, and frowned sulky disapproval at an order
which he either would not, or dared not, countermand. Probably the
latter had most to do with it, as everybody looked hungry and mutinous,
and a great deal more eager for their supper than the life of Sir Norman
Kingsley.

"Your majesty, the royal banquet is waiting," insinuated the lord high
chamberl