herself. It was of fine lace woven in a single piece,
and it lay in a foam of shining threads traced with pure lines of
shadow. On her head were a jeweled coronal and jeweled hair-loops in
the Phoenician fashion, once taken from a king's casket and sent
secretly, upon the decline of Assyrian ascendancy, to be bartered in
the marts of Coele-Syria. Chains of jewels, in a noon of colour, lay
about her throat, as once they lay upon the shoulders of the dead
queens of Yaque and, before them, of the women of the elder
dynasties long since recorded in indifferent dust. Girdling her
waist was a zone of rubies that burned positive in the tempered
light. With all her delicacy, Olivia was like her rubies--vivid,
graphic, delineated not by light but by line.

The members of the High Council rustled in their colour and white,
and flashed their golden stars; the Golden Guards (save the apostate
few who were that day sentenced to be set adrift) were filling the
stairway like a bank of buttercups; and Olivia's women, led by
Antoinette in a gown of colours not to be lightly denominated, were
entering by an opposite door. In the raised seats near the High
Council, Mrs. Hastings and Mr. Frothingham leaned to wave a
sustaining greeting. Until that high moment Mrs. Medora Hastings had
been by no means certain that Olivia would appear at all, though she
openly nourished the hope that "everything would go off smoothly."
("I don't care much for foreigners and never have," she confided to
Mr. Frothingham, "still, I was thinking while I was at breakfast,
after all, to the prince _we are_ the foreigners. There is something
in that, don't you think? And then the dear prince--he is so very
metaphysical!")

Upon the beetling throne Olivia took her place, and her women sank
about her like tiers of sunset clouds. She was so little and so
beautiful and so unconsciously appealing that when Prince Tabnit and
Cassyrus and the rest of the court entered, it is doubtful if an eye
left Olivia, to homage them. But Prince Tabnit was the last to note
that, for he saw only Olivia; and the world--the world was an
intaglio of his own designing.

With due magnificence the preliminary ceremonies of the coronation
proceeded--musty necessities, like oaths and historical truths,
being mingled with the most delicate observances, such as the
naming of the former princesses of the island, from Adija, daughter
of King Abibaal, to Olivia, daughter of King Otho; and such