nder long.
The curtain was drawn back, and the voice of some unseen person bade
them go forward.

They found themselves in a smaller room than the last, beautifully
decorated. The walls were painted a very pale blue, and large frescoes
ornamented each side of the chamber. Thick marble columns, highly
polished, jutted out into the room, and in the recess between each pair
was a marble bench, with cushions of crimson samite. Two walnut-wood
chairs, furnished with crimson samite cushions, stood in the middle of
the room. Small leaf-tables were fixed to the walls here and there.
The floor was of waxed wood, very slippery to tread upon. At the
farther side of the room two doors stood open, side by side, the one
leading to a little oratory in the turret, the other to a balcony which
ran round the tower. In one corner a young lady sat at an embroidery
frame, and in another a little girl of seven years old, who deeply
interested Avice, was feeding her pet peacock. In one of the chairs,
with some fancy work in her hand, sat a lady whose age was about
twenty-eight, and whose rich dress of gold-coloured samite, and the gold
and pearl fillet which bound her hair, divided Avice's attention with
the child and the peacock. Agnes was dropping flurried courtesies to
everybody at once. Muriel, who seemed to have a much better notion of
what she ought to do, took a step forward, and knelt before the lady who
sat in the chair.

"Lady," she said, "we are the Queen's servants."

Queen Eleanor, for it was she, looked up on them with a smile. She was
a beautiful brunette, lively and animated when she spoke, but with an
easy-going, lazy expression when she did not. It struck Avice, who had
eyes for everything, and was making good use of them, that her Majesty
might have brushed her rich dark hair a little smoother, and have
fastened her diamond brooch less unevenly than she had done.

It was the pleasanter side of Queen Eleanor which was being shown to
them. She could be very pleasant when she was pleased, and very kind
and affable when she liked people. But she could be very harsh and
tyrannical to those whom she did not like; and she was one of those many
people with whom out of sight is out of mind. Let her see a suffering
child, and she would be sorry and anxious to help; but a thousand
suffering people whom she did not see, even if something which she did
had made them suffer, were nothing at all to her.

The Queen like