air
more impassive had she been holding a levee at St. James'. Seated on her
divan, she was clothed in a purple robe; her long dark hair descended
over her shoulders, and was drawn off her white forehead, which was
bound with a broad circlet of pure gold, and of great antiquity. On
her right hand stood Keferinis, the captain of her guard, and a
priestly-looking person with a long white beard, and then at some
distance from these three personages, a considerable number of
individuals, between whose appearance and that of her ordinary subjects
there was little difference. On her left hand were immediately three
female attendants, young and pretty; at some distance from them, a troop
of female slaves; and again, at a still further distance, another body
of her subjects in their white turbans and their black dresses. The
chamber was spacious, and rudely painted in the Ionic style.

'It is most undoubtedly requested, and in a vein of the most
condescending friendship, by the perfectly irresistible Queen, that
the princes should be seated,' said Keferinis, and accordingly Tancred
occupied his allotted seat on the right of the Queen, though at some
distance, and the young Emir filled his on the left. Fakredeen was
dressed in Syrian splendour, a blaze of shawls and jewelled arms; but
Tancred retained on this, as he had done on every other occasion, the
European dress, though in the present instance it assumed a somewhat
more brilliant shape than ordinary, in the dark green regimentals,
the rich embroidery, and the flowing plume of the Bellamont yeomanry
cavalry.

'You are a prince of the English,' said the Queen to Tancred.

'I am an Englishman,' he replied, 'and a subject of our Queen, for we
also have the good fortune to be ruled over by the young and the fair.'

'My fathers and the House of Shehaab have been ever friends,' she
continued, turning to Fakredeen.

'May they ever continue so!' he replied. 'For if the Shehaabs and the
Ansarey are of one mind, Syria is no longer earth, but indeed paradise.'

'You live much in ships?' said the Queen, turning to Tancred.

'We are an insular people,' he answered, somewhat confusedly, but the
perfectly-informed Keferinis came to the succour both of Tancred and of
his sovereign.

'The English live in ships only during six months of the year,
principally when they go to India, the rest entirely at their country
houses.'

'Ships are required to take you to India?' said her Maje