It was a woman he saw, a small and slender woman, lying almost at full length, supported by a sliding pile of cushions, the one on which her head rested being a huge square of gold-tinted satin, with peacocks’ feathers stitched down in all directions upon the smooth silk. Below her on the ground was a little inlaid Turkish table, on which burnt, in rather dangerous proximity to the lady’s light draperies, an open lamp. A loose but clinging garment of soft white stuff hid her figure and yet disclosed its outlines, the graceful curves from shoulder to hip, and from hip to heel, while the tip of an embroidered velvet slipper peeped out beneath its folds, and a slender rounded arm, laden from shoulder to wrist with armlets and bracelets, gold, silver and enamelled, escaping from its loose open sleeve, hung down straight over the side of the divan, and looked in the soft light which fell on it from the lamp, like purest ivory seen in the last rays of a sunset. Long gold and silver chains which, had she been erect, would have reached below her waist, hung round her neck and jingled together over the side of the couch. A great soft scarf of many skilfully blended colours was bound about her waist and fastened by a large Indian ornament of roughly hewn precious stones. The robe she wore had become disarranged by her reclining posture, so that great folds of the soft white muslin had gathered about her neck, forming a white nest-like frame for her small head, which was covered by a tiny scarlet velvet cap, from under which her short and curly black hair escaped in a tangled bush that cast a shade over a little white face. Her eyes were closed and a most ghastly livid pallor was spread over her features from forehead to chin; so that Lauriston, with a great shock, was awakened out of the state of moonstruck bewilderment and admiration into which the strange sight had thrown him, by a horrible belief that he was standing in the presence of a dead woman. “Great Heaven!” broke from his stammering lips as he made one quick step forward. But at the sound of his voice the sleeping girl awoke; and her opening eyes falling at once upon a stranger, she sprang into a sitting position with a startled cry. In a moment he saw what had caused his mistake. A blue glass in one side of the octagonal lantern above had thrown a livid light on the young girl’s face, which he now saw to be healthily flushed with sleep, and animated with the most vivid alarm.