stories to you and the
illustrated Sunday supplements had not yet disillusioned you as to how
queens wear their hats.

She was Titania, with a touch of Diana the Huntress, and decidedly
something of Athena, goddess of wisdom, clothed in flowing cream that
showed the outlines of her figure, and with sandals on her bare feet.
Not a diamond. Not a jewel of any kind. Her hair was bound up in the
Grecian fashion and shone like yellow gold.

Surely she seemed to have been born for the very purpose of presiding.
Perhaps she was the only one who was at ease, for the others shifted
restlessly behind their veils and had that vague, uncertain air that
goes with inexperience--although one woman, larger looking than the
rest, and veiled in embroidered black instead of colors, sat on a chair
near the throne with a rather more nervy-looking outline. There were
more than a hundred women in there all told.

Yasmini's change of countenance at sight of my predicament was
instantaneous. I don't doubt it was her fault that I had been mistreated
on the way up, for these women had seen me bound by her orders and
mocked by her a couple of hours previously. But now she saw fit to seem
indignant at the treatment I had suffered, and she made even the ranks
of veiled princesses shudder as she rose and stormed at my captors,
giving each word a sort of whip-lash weight.

"Shall a guest of mine suffer in my house?"

One of the women piped up with a complaint against me. I had trodden on
her foot and crushed her against a door-jamb.

"Would he had slain you!" she retorted. "She-dog! Take her away! I will
punish her afterward! Who stuck pins into him? Speak, or I will punish
all of you!"

None owned up, but three or four of them who had not been able to come
near enough to do me any damage betrayed the others, so she ordered all
except four of them out of the room to await punishment at her
convenience. And then she proceeded to apologize to me with such royal
grace and apparent sincerity that I wondered whom she suspected of
overhearing her. Wondering, my eyes wandering, I noticed the woman
veiled in black. She was an elderly looking female, rather crouched up
in her gorgeous shawl as if troubled with rheumatism, and neither her
hands nor her feet were visible, both being hidden in the folds of the
long _sari_.

The next instant Yasmini flew into a passion because the Mahatma and I
were kept standing. The Mahatma was not standing, as a matte