Liebchen wore a blue moiré silk skirt that not merely trailed behind her, but was so long in front that it had to be looped up through a girdle around her hips, and this gave her quite the effect of a lady of the period which she represented. Annunciata wore a yellow gown, equally too long for her, equally puffy around her hips. Both had head-dresses with feathers and jewels, both were decked with chains and each carried a fan--merely as a touch of vague elegance. Beth, as the hapless queen, wore a royal robe of purple velvet and a cap of lavender with a long white veil flowing down her shoulders. Her head-dress came down in a point in the middle of her forehead so that there, at least, she looked like the portraits of Mary Stuart and a clever person might guess whom she represented. “Gracious! You do look like I don’t know what!” exclaimed Dirk candidly. “I don’t blame whoever it was that did it for putting you into prison, if there wasn’t any asylum those days! Now what do you do--what’s the game, after you get togged out?” Beth looked a little troubled; Dirk had laid his finger on the weak spot in these imaginative plays of hers. Nothing actual ever came of the dressing up; it all depended on how much the players could get out of feeling their parts. “Why, I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I think the captive queen had better walk about her prison, under the guard of George Douglas--that’s you. We can go through the house--nobody’s around--and pretend it’s Lochleven Castle. My ladies in waiting will walk behind me and sometimes I shall invite one or the other to take her place at my side. We’ll come back up-stairs afterward and they will sing, I guess. The queen’s ladies sang a good deal while she embroidered, or wrote Latin prayers, or French poetry.” “Well, if that isn’t a lively game!” cried Dirk with a shout of laughter. “The queen must have had some head if she could write prayers and poetry in two languages with people singing around her. If a bunch of girls sang I think I see what my Latin and French exercises would look like! Well, come on, if you’re going to promenade! Come on; queen’s move! Bob Leonard’s been teaching me chess.” Beth preceded down the hall, her step stately, her carriage aimed to convey dignity, resignation and suffering. She felt that she actually was the imprisoned queen and her eyes glowed with inward light as she dwelt upon her misfortunes, a royal prisoner in this lonely northern island castle, with hope fading day by day. She managed to overlook the awkwardness of her ladies in their looped up gowns, even the schoolboy suit of “George Douglas,” which distressed her till she forcibly banished it from her mind. The funny little cavalcade proceeded down to the lower hall and lifted the curtain of the library door. Here the queen felt that she should find the setting most like the dark castle of her imagination. “George Douglas” held the leather curtain back for her and her attendants to pass through.