“Whom do you say, Matten?” he questioned and when the boy had repeated the names, meditated briefly.  He was at a loss to fathom what this strange visit might portend; beyond doubt, he reflected (in a world which was an intaglio of his own designing) it portended nothing at all.  He hastened forward to wait upon them and paused midway the room, for the highest tribute that a Prince of the Litany could pay to another was to receive him in this chamber of the Crucified Sphinx.

“Conduct them here, Matten,” he commanded, and took up his station beside an hundred-branched candlestick made in Curium.  There he stood when, having been led down corridors of ivory and through shining anterooms, Mrs. Hastings and Olivia and Antoinette appeared on the threshold of the chamber, followed by Mr. Frothingham.  As the prince hastened forward to meet them with sweepings of his gown embroidered by a thousand needles and bent above their hands uttering gracious words, assuredly in all the history of Med and of the Litany the room of the Crucified Sphinx had never presented a more peculiar picture.

Into that tranquil atmosphere, dream-pervaded, Mrs. Medora Hastings swept with all the certainty of an opinion bludgeoning the frail security of a fact.  She had refused to have her belongings sent to the apartments in the House of the Litany placed that day at her disposal, preferring to dress for the coronation before she descended from Mount Khalak.  She was therefore in a robe of black samite, trimmed with the fur of a whole chapter of extinct animals, and bangles and pendants of jewels bobbed and ticked all about her.  But on her head she wore the bonnet trimmed with a parrot, set, as usual, frightfully awry.  Beside her, with all the timidity of charming reality in the presence of fantasy, came Olivia and Antoinette—­Olivia in a walking frock of white broadcloth, with an auto coat of hunting pink, and a cap held down by yards of cloudy veiling; Antoinette in a blue cloth gown, and about them both—­stout little boots and suede gloves and smart shirt-waists—­such an air of actuality as this chamber, prince and Sphinx and tradition and all, could not approach.  Mr. Augustus Frothingham had struck his usual incontestable middle-ground by appearing in the blue velvet of a robe of State, over which he had slipped his light covert top-coat, and he carried his immaculate top-hat and a silver-headed stick.

“Prince Tabnit,” said Mrs. Medora Hastings without ceremony, “what have they done with that poor young man?  Ask him, Olivia,” she besought, sinking down upon a chair of verd antique and extending a limp, plump hand to the niece who always did everything executive.