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While some of his chums were lighting the candles on the shrines and unfolding the sacred altar cloths of beautiful lace work made by Doña Cristina, the son and his more intimate friends were arraying themselves before the faithful, covering themselves with surplices and gold-worked vestments and putting wonderful caps on their heads.
So I walked up and came upon a place pargetted with marble and spread and hung with gold-worked carpets and tapestry, amiddlemostof which stood a throne of juniper wood inlaid with pearls and precious stones and set with bosses of emeralds.
The patterns on the gold-worked curtains ran up and down, melting and reforming as the folds shook and quivered to the night wind; and when the talk grew more earnest the jewelled forefinger snapped out little sparks of light between the embroideries. Behind the cart was a wall of uncertain darkness speckled with little flames and alive with half-caught forms and faces and shadows.
Whispered remonstrances were useless, and Sher Singh, after waiting for a moment in vain, cast the nazar contemptuously on the gold-worked carpet, and turned away with a face convulsed with rage. "The child has been put up to this!" he muttered angrily, and stalked down the gangway, between the rows of Sirdars and notables.
The books, too, were all in handsome editions Meredith in green leather with a gold-worked monogram, Pater in red half-morocco, Swinburne in light-blue with red and gold tooling rich and to some extent unobtrusive, but reiterating unmistakably the first impression that the room had given, the mark of something superficial. Robin was there now, dressing for dinner.
Her rooms were spread with gold-worked carpets and hung with tapestries and brocaded silks figured with all manner of beasts and birds in their proper colours. Such was the girl's home now, where only happiness was denied to her.
You see Cardinals with dirty robes, under the most gorgeous stoles, while the surplices are as yellow as the stained gold-worked bands which hang across them. There is, indeed, no sense of congruity or the inherent fitness of things about the Italian ceremonials.
In a moment the great doors on the other side flew open, and a number of gaily dressed natives in peaked red caps the Royal body-guard emerged, followed by five prancing steeds, magnificent barbs of different colours, richly caparisoned, led by gold-worked bridles.
I got a foretaste of appreciation while still on the return journey. Travelling alone as I was, with an attendant, brimming with health and spirits, and conspicuous with my gold-worked cap, all the English people I came across in the train made much of me.
It was Antinous come to life in an embroidered cap and a gold-worked jacket, and it was Antinous with a voice like Mario, and who waltzed to perfection. This splendid creature, a modern Alcibiades in gifts of mind and graces, soon heard, amongst his other triumphs, how a rich and handsome Irish girl had fallen in love with him at first sight.
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