hivers, which presently wove into the low and dreamy melody
of _Carry me back to old Virginia_. Around the walls of the yellow
parlor, chairs stood two deep, occupied, or preempted by fan or
gloves or lacy handkerchief. The floor, newly waxed, gleamed in the
candle-light like beaten moonbeams. At its farther end was a low dais
covered by a thin Persian prayer-rug, where a single great tapestried
chair of dull gold waited throne-like, flanked on either side by the
chaperons, ladies of honor to the queen to come.

Promptly as the clock in the hall chimed ten, the music merged into a
march. Doors on opposite sides of the upper hall swung wide and down
the broad staircase came, with slow step, a stately procession: two
heralds in fawn-colored doublets with scroll and trumpets wound with
flowers, behind them the Queen of Beauty, her finger-tips resting
lightly in the hand of the Knight of the Crimson Rose, and these
followed by as brave a concourse of lords and ladies as ever graced
castle-hall in the gallant days "when knighthood was in flower."

Shirley's gown was of pure white: her arms were swathed in tulle,
crossed with straps of seed-pearl, over which hung long semi-flowing
sleeves of satin, and from her shoulders rose a stiff pointed medieval
collar of Venetian lace, against whose pale traceries her bronze hair
glowed with rosy lights. The edge of the square-cut corsage was powdered
with the pearls and against their sheen her breast and neck had the
soft creamy ivory of magnolia buds. Her straight plain train of satin,
knotted with fresh white rose-buds (Nancy Chalmers had labored for a
frantic half-hour in the dressing-room for this effect) was held by the
seven-year-old Byloe twins, in beribboned knickerbockers, duly impressed
with the grandeur of their privilege and grimly intent on acquitting
themselves with glory.

Shirley's face was still touched with the surprise that had swept it
as Valiant had stepped to her side. She had looked to see him in the
conventional panoply a sober-sided masculine mode decrees. What she
had beheld was a figure that might have stepped out of an Elizabethan
picture-frame. He was in deep purple slashed with gold. A cloak of thin
crimson velvet narrowly edged with ermine hung from his shoulders, lined
with tissue-like cloth-of-gold. From the rolling brim of his hat swept a
curling purple plume. He wore a slender dress-sword, and an order set
with brilliants sparkled on his breast.