“Does your highness intend remaining here all night?” demanded the queen, rather fiercely. “If not, the sooner we leave this ghastly place the better. The play is over, and supper is waiting.” With which the royal virago made an imperious motion for her attendant sprites in gossamer white to precede her, and turned with her accustomed stately step to follow. The music immediately changed from its doleful dirge to a spirited measure, and the whole company flocked after her, back to the great room of state. There they all paused, hovering in uncertainty around the room, while the queen, holding her purple train up lightly in one hand, stood at the foot of the throne, glancing at them with her cold, haughty and beautiful eyes. In their wandering, those same darkly-splendid eyes glanced and lighted on Sir Norman, who, in a state of seeming stupor at the horrible scene he had just witnessed, stood near the green table, and they sent a thrill through him with their wonderful resemblance to Leoline's. So vividly alike were they, that he half doubted for a moment whether she and Leoline were not really one; but no--Leoline never could have had the cold, cruel heart to stand and witness such a horrible sight. Miranda's dark, piercing glance fell as haughtily and disdainfully on him as it had on the rest; and his heart sank as he thought that whatever sympathy she had felt for him was entirely gone. It might have been a whim, a woman's caprice, a spirit of contradiction, that had induced her to defend him at first. Whatever it was, and it mattered not now, it had completely vanished. No face of marble could have been colder, or stonier, or harder, than hers, as she looked at him out of the depths of her great dark eyes; and with that look, his last lingering hope of life vanished. “And now for the next trial!” exclaimed the dwarf, briskly breaking in upon his drab-colored meditations, and bustling past. “We will get it over at once, and have done with it!” “You will do no such thing!” said the imperious voice of the queenly shrew. “We will have neither trials nor anything else until after supper, which has already been delayed four full minutes. My lord chamberlain, have the goodness to step in and see that all is in order.” One of the gilded and decorated gentlemen whom sir Norman had mistaken for ambassadors stepped off, in obedience, through another opening in the tapestry--which seemed to be as extensively undermined with such apertures as a cabman's coat with capes--and, while he was gone, the queen stood drawn up to her full height, with her scornful face looking down on the dwarf. That small man knit up his very plain face into a bristle of the sourest kinks, and frowned sulky disapproval at an order which he either would not, or dared not, countermand. Probably the latter had most to do with it, as everybody looked hungry and mutinous, and a great deal more eager for their supper than the life of Sir Norman Kingsley.