The faces of the great assembly blurred and wavered before Olivia, and the low hum of the talk in the room was relative, like the voices of passers-by.  She looked up at the prince and away from him in mute appeal to something that ought to help her and would not.  For Olivia was of those who, never having seen the face of Destiny very near, are accustomed to look upon nothing as wholly irrevocable; and—­for one of her graces—­she had the feminine expectation that, if only events can be sufficiently postponed, something will intervene; which is perhaps a heritage of the gentlest women descended from Homeric days.  If the island was so historic, little Olivia may have said, where was the interfering goddess?  She looked unseeingly toward St. George and toward her father, and the sense of the bitter actuality of the choice suddenly wounded her, as the Actual for ever wounds the woman and the dream.

Then suddenly, above the stir of expectation of the people, and the associate bustling of the High Council there came a vague confusion and trampling from outside, and the far outer doors of the hall were thrown open with a jar and a breath, vibrant as a murmur.  There was a cry, the determined resistance of some of the Golden Guard, and shouts of expostulation and warning as they were flung aside by a powerful arm.  In the disorder that followed, a miraculously-familiar figure—­that familiarity and strangeness are both miracles ought to explain certain mysteries—­was beside St. George and a thankful voice said in his ear: 

“Mr. St. George, sir, for the mercy of Heaven, sir—­come back to the yacht.  No person can tell what may happen ten minutes ahead, sir!”

The oracle of this universal truth was Rollo, palpitating, his immaculate coat stained with earth, earth-stains on his cheeks, and his breast labouring in an excitement which only anxiety for his master could effect.  But St. George hardly saw him.  His eyes were fixed on some one who stood towering before the dais, like the old prints of the avenging goddesses.  Clad in the hideous stripes which boards of directors consider de rigueur for the soul that is to be won back to the normal, stood the woman Elissa, who, by all counts of Prince Tabnit, should have been singing a hymn with Mrs. Manners and Miss Bella Bliss Utter in the Bitley Reformatory, in Westchester County, New York.

“Stop!” she cried in that perfect English which is not only a rare experience but a pleasant adventure, “what new horror is this?”

To Prince Tabnit’s face, as he looked at her, came once more that indefinable change—­only this time nearer and more intimately explainable, as if something ethereal, trained to delicate lines, like smoke, should suddenly shape itself to a menace.  St. George saw the woman step close to the dais, he saw Olivia’s eyes questioning him, and in the hurried rising of the peers and of the High Council he heard Rollo’s voice in his ear: