All these combined with a brilliant intellect had aroused within the King a love he had thought would always elude him.
Olinda had stood silent for so long that Mrs. Kingston asked almost in surprise,
“You admire the bed, Miss Selwyn?”
“I have never seen anything like it,” Olinda replied truthfully.
The embroidery of silver and gold thread, with the silks of every colour of the rainbow interspersed with huge pearls, was on black velvet. The headboard was an embroidered shell of silver executed in silk, depicting Venus rising from the foam.
Where Botticelli’s Venus had been adorned only by her hair, this one wore a necklace of tiny diamonds round her neck and diamonds and pearls glittered in her hair.
There was hardly an inch on the black velvet that was not embroidered with birds and
