Each lovely face was unmasked, but Sir Norman's dazzled eyes in vain sought among them for one he knew.All that "rosebud garden of girls" were perfect strangers to him, but not so the gallants, who fluttered among them like moths around meteors.They, too, were in gorgeous array, in purple and fine linen, which being interpreted, signifieth in silken hose of every color under the sun, spangled and embroidered slippers radiant with diamond buckles, doublets of as many different shades as their tights, slashed with satin and embroidered with gold.Most of them wore huge powdered wigs, according to the hideous fashion then in vogue, and under those same ugly scalps, laughed many a handsome face Sir Norman well knew.The majority of those richly-robed gallants were strangers to him as well as the ladies, but whoever they were, whether mortal men or "spirits from the vasty deep,"they were in the tallest sort of clover just then.Evidently they knew it, too, and seemed to be on the best of terms with themselves and all the world, and laughed, and flirted, and flattered, with as mach perfection as so many ball-room Apollos of the present day.
Still no one ascended the golden and crimson throne, though many of the ladies and gentlemen fluttering about it were arrayed as royally as any common king or queen need wish to be.They promenaded up and down, arm in arm; they seated themselves in the carved and gilded chairs; they gathered in little groups to talk and laugh, did everything, in short, but ascend the throne; and the solitary spectator up above began to grow intensely curious to know who it was for.Their conversation he could plainly hear, and to say that it amazed him, would be to use a feeble expression, altogether inadequate to his feelings.Not that it was the remarks they made that gave his system each a shook, but the names by which they addressed each other.One answered to the aspiring cognomen of the Duke of Northumberland; another was the Earl of Leicester; another, the Duke of Devonshire; another, the Earl of Clarendon; another, the Duke of Buckingham; and so on, ad infinitum, dukes and earls alternately, like bricks and mortar in the wall of a house.There were other dignitaries besides, some that Sir Norman had a faint recollection of hearing were dead for some years - Cardinal Wolsey, Sir Thomas More, the Earl of Bothwell, King Henry Darnley, Sir Walter Raleigh, the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Southampton, the Duke of York, and no end of others with equally sonorous titles.As for mere lords and baronets, and such small deer, there was nothing so plebeian present, and they were evidently looked upon by the distinguished assembly, like small beer in thunder, with pity and contempt.
The ladies, too, were all duchesses, marchionesses, countesses, and looked fit for princesses, Sir Norman thought, though he heard none of them styled quite so high as that.The tone of conversation was light and easy, but at the same time extremely ceremonious and courtly, and all seemed to be enjoying themselves in the moat delightful sort of a way, which people of, such distinguished rank, I am told, seldom do.All went merry as a marriage-bell, and sweetly over the gay jingle of voices rose the sweet, faint strains of the unseen music.
Suddenly all was changed.The great door of glass and gilding opposite the throne was flung wide, and a grand usher in a grand court livery flourished a mighty grand wand, and shouted, in a stentorian voice"Back: back, ye lieges, and make way for Her Majesty, Queen Miranda!"Instantly the unseen band thundered forth the national anthem.
The splendid throng fell back on either hand in profoundest silence and expectation.The grand usher mysteriously disappeared, and in his place there stalked forward a score of soldiers, with clanking swords and fierce moustaches, in the gorgeous uniform of the king's body-guard.These showy warriors arranged themselves silently on either side of the crimson throne, and were followed by half a dozen dazzling personages, the foremost crowned with mitre, armed with crozier, and robed in the ecclesiastical glory of an archbishop, but the face underneath, to the deep surprise and scandal of Sir Norman, was that of the fastest young rou? of Charles court, after him came another pompous dignitary, in such unheard of magnificence that the unseen looker-on set him down for a prime minister, or a lord high chancellor, at the very least.The somewhat gaudy-looking gentlemen who stepped after the pious prelate and peer wore the stars and garters of foreign courts, and were evidently embassadors extraordinary to that of her midnight majesty.After them came a snowy flock of fair young girls, angels all but the wings, slender as sylphs, and robed in purest white.Each bore on her arm a basket of flowers, roses and rosebuds of every tint, from snowy white to darkest crimson, and as they floated in they scattered them lightly as they went.And then after all came another vision, "the last, the brightest, the best - "the Midnight Queen" herself.One other figure followed her, and as they entered, a shout arose from the whole assemblage, "Long live Queen Miranda!" And bowing gracefully and easily to the right end left, the queen with a queenly step, trod the long crimson carpet and mounted the regal throne.
>From the first moment of his looking down, Sir Norman had been staring with all the eyes in his head, undergoing one shock of surprise after another with the equanimity of a man quite need to it; but now a cry arose to his lips, and died there in voiceless consternation.For he recognized the queen - well he might! - he had seen her before, and her face was the face of Leoline!
