on his elbow, glanced with a touch of curiosity at the face of his
Queen. There was not a flicker of emotion on its fair cold calmness,--
not a quiver on the beautiful lips, or a sigh to stir the quiet breast
on which the lilies rested, white and waxen, and heavily odorous. He
withdrew his gaze with a half smile at his own folly for imagining that
she could be moved by a mere song to any expression of feeling,--even
for a moment,--and allowed his glance to wander unreservedly over the
forms and features of the other ladies in attendance who, conscious of
his regard, dropped their eyelids and blushed softly, after the fashion
approved by the heroines of the melodramatic stage. Whereat he began to
think of the tiresome sameness of women generally; and their irritating
habit of living always at two extremes,--either all ardour, or all
coldness.

"Both are equally fatiguing to a man's mind," he thought impatiently--
"The only woman that is truly fascinating is the one who is never in
the same mind two days together. Fair on Monday, plain on Tuesday,
sweet on Wednesday, sour on Thursday, tender on Friday, cold on
Saturday, and in all moods at once on Sunday,--that being a day of
rest! I should adore such a woman as that if I ever met her, because I
should never know her mind towards me!"

A soft serenade rendered by violins, with a harp accompaniment, was
followed by a gay mazurka, played by all the instruments together,--and
this finished the musical programme.

The Queen rose, accepting the hand which the King extended to her, and
moved with him slowly across the rose-garden, her long snowy train
glistering with jewels, and held up from the greensward by a pretty
page, who, in his picturesque costume of rose and gold, demurely