And Olivia, standing in the queen's gown,
listened without hearing one word, and turned to have her veil
lifted by Antoinette and the daughter of a peer of Yaque; and she
knelt before the people while the lord chief-chancellor set the
crown on her bright hair. It was a picture that thrilled the lord
chief-chancellor himself--who was a worshiper of beauty, and a man
given to angling in the lagoon and making metric translations of the
inscriptions.
Then it was in the room as if a faint flame had been breathed upon
and had upleaped in a thousand ways of expectancy, and as if a
secret sign had been set in the lift and dip of the music--the music
that was so like the great chamber with its lift and dip of carven
line. The thrill with which one knows the glad news of an unopened
letter was upon them all, and they heard that swift breath of an
event that stirs before its coming. When Olivia's women fell back
from the dais with wonder and murmur, the murmur was caught up in
the great hall, and ran from tier to tier as amazement, as
incredulity, and as thanksgiving.
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