in the sand, as I had seen before in museums.  All the pores of the body seemed to have been preserved in some wonderful way.  The flesh was full and round, as in a living person; and the skin was as smooth as satin.  The colour seemed extraordinary.  It was like ivory, new ivory; except where the right arm, with shattered, bloodstained wrist and missing hand had lain bare to exposure in the sarcophagus for so many tens of centuries.

With a womanly impulse; with a mouth that drooped with pity, with eyes that flashed with anger, and cheeks that flamed, Margaret threw over the body the beautiful robe which lay across her arm.  Only the face was then to be seen.  This was more startling even than the body, for it seemed not dead, but alive.  The eyelids were closed; but the long, black, curling lashes lay over on the cheeks.  The nostrils, set in grave pride, seemed to have the repose which, when it is seen in life, is greater than the repose of death.  The full, red lips, though the mouth was not open, showed the tiniest white line of pearly teeth within.  Her hair, glorious in quantity and glossy black as the raven’s wing, was piled in great masses over the white forehead, on which a few curling tresses strayed like tendrils.  I was amazed at the likeness to Margaret, though I had had my mind prepared for this by Mr. Corbeck’s quotation of her father’s statement.  This woman—­I could not think of her as a mummy or a corpse—­was the image of Margaret as my eyes had first lit on her.  The likeness was increased by the jewelled ornament which she wore in her hair, the “Disk and Plumes”, such as Margaret, too, had worn.  It, too, was a glorious jewel; one noble pearl of moonlight lustre, flanked by carven pieces of moonstone.

Mr. Trelawny was overcome as he looked.  He quite broke down; and when Margaret flew to him and held him close in her arms and comforted him, I heard him murmur brokenly: 

“It looks as if you were dead, my child!”

There was a long silence.  I could hear without the roar of the wind, which was now risen to a tempest, and the furious dashing of the waves far below.  Mr. Trelawny’s voice broke the spell: 

“Later on we must try and find out the process of embalming.  It is not like any that I know.  There does not seem to have been any opening cut for the withdrawing of the viscera and organs, which apparently remain intact within the body.  Then, again, there is no moisture in the flesh; but its place is supplied with something else, as though wax or stearine had been conveyed into the veins by some subtle process.  I wonder could it be possible that at that time they could have used paraffin.  It might have been, by some process that we know not, pumped into the veins, where it hardened!”

Margaret, having thrown a white sheet over the Queen’s body, asked us to bring it to her own room, where we laid it on her bed.  Then she sent us away, saying: