an Kingsley!" shouted the dwarf, rushing in. "Come
forth and meet your doom!"

But no Sir Norman Kingsley obeyed the pleasant invitation, and a dull
echo from the darkness alone answered him. There was a lamp burning on
the floor, and near it lay a form, shining and specked with white in the
gloom. He made for it between fear and fury, but there was something
red and slippery on the ground, in which his foot slipped, and he
fell. Simultaneously there was a wild cry from the two guards and the
attendant, that was echoed by a perfect screech of rage from the dwarf,
as on looking down he beheld Queen Miranda lying on the floor in the
pool of blood, and apparently quite dead, and Sir Norman Kingsley gone.

CHAPTER XIV. IN THE DUNGEON.

The interim between Miranda setting down her lamp on the dungeon floor
among the rats and the beetles, and the dwarf's finding her bleeding
and senseless, was not more than twenty minutes, but a great deal may be
done in twenty minutes judiciously expended, and most decidedly it was
so in the present case. Both rats and beetles paused to contemplate the
flickering lamp, and Miranda paused to contemplate them, and Sir
Norman paused to contemplate her, for an instant or so in silence. Her
marvelous resemblance to Leoline, in all but one thing, struck him more
and more--there was the same beautiful transparent colorless complexion,
the same light, straight, graceful figure, the same small oval delicate
features; the same profuse waves of shining dark hair, the same large,
dark, brilliant eyes; the same, little, rosy pretty mouth, like one of
Correggio's smiling angels. The one thing wanting was expression--in
Leoline's face there was a kind of childlike simplicity; a look half
shy, half fearless, half solemn in her wonderful eyes; but in this,
her prototype, there was nothing shy or solemn; all was cold, hard, and
glittering, and the brooding eyes were full of a dull, dusky fire. She
looked as hard and cold and bitter, as she was beautiful; and Sir Norman
began to perplex himself inwardly as to what had brought her here.
Surely not sympathy, for nothing wearing that face of stone, could
even know the meaning of such a word. While he looked at her, half
wonderingly, half pityingly, half tenderly--a queer word that last,
but the feeling was caused by her resemblance to Leoline--she had been
moodily watching an old gray rat, the patriarch of his tribe, who was
making toward her in short r