: but he did not think at all of that royal
personage; his eyes were fixed upon the princess, who sat to the
right of her father. Had it not been for the moiety of barbarism in
her nature it is probable that lady would not have been there; but
her intense and fervid soul would not allow her to be absent on an
occasion in which she was so terribly interested. From the moment
that the decree had gone forth that her lover should decide his fate
in the king's arena, she had thought of nothing, night or day, but
this great event and the various subjects connected with it.
Possessed of more power, influence, and force of character than any
one who had ever before been interested in such a case, she had done
what no other person had done--she had possessed herself of the
secret of the doors. She knew in which of the two rooms that lay
behind those doors stood the cage of the tiger, with its open front,
and in which waited the lady. Through these thick doors, heavily
curtained with skins on the inside, it was impossible that any noise
or suggestion should come from within to the person who should
approach to raise the latch of one of them; but gold, and the power
of a woman's will, had brought the secret to the princess.

And not only did she know in which room stood the lady ready to
emerge, all blushing and radiant, should her door be opened, but she
knew who the lady was. It was one of the fairest and loveliest of
the damsels of the court who had been selected as the reward of the
accused youth, should he be proved innocent of the crime of aspiring
to one so far above him; and the princess hated her. Often had she
seen, or imagined that she had seen, this fair creature throwing
glances of admiration upon the person of her lover, and sometimes
she thought these glances were perceived and even returned. Now and
then she had seen them talking together; it was but for a moment or
two, but much can be said in a brief space; it may have been on most
unimportant topics, but how could she know that? The girl was
lovely, but she had dared to raise her eyes to the loved one of the
princess; and, with all the intensity of the savage blood
transmitted to her through long lines of wholly barbaric ancestors,
she hated the woman who blushed and trembled behind that silent
door.

When her lover turned and looked at her, and his eye met hers as she
sat there paler and whiter than any one in the vast ocean of anxious
faces about her, he sa