Upon her the king laid
a tranquillizing hand and, with a droop of eyelids in recognition of
Mr. Frothingham, he murmured: "Ah, Medora--Medora! Delight in the
moment--but do not embrace it," while beside him, star-eyed, Olivia
stood waiting for Prince Tabnit to speak.
To Olivia, trembling a little as she leaned upon his arm, King Otho
bent with some word, at which she raised to his her startled face,
and turned from him uncertainly, and burned a heavenly colour from
brow to chin. Then, her father's words being insistent in her ear,
and her own heart being tumultuous with what he had told her, she
turned as he bade her, and, following his glance, slipped beneath a
shining curtain that cut from the audience chamber the still
seclusion of the King's Alcove, a chamber long sacred to the
sovereigns of Yaque.
Confused with her wonder and questioning, hardly daring to
understand the import of her father's words, Olivia went down a
passage set between two high white walls of the palace, open
to-day to the upper blue and to the floating pennons of the dome.
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