He was a fine-looking, handsome-featured young man, of about thirty, tall and broad-shouldered, though beside the commanding stature of Heliobas, his figure did not show to so much advantage as it might have done beside a less imposing contrast.

He bowed to me with easy and courteous grace; but his deeply reverential salute to Zara had something in it of that humility which a slave might render to a queen.

She bent her head slightly in answer, and still holding me by the hand, moved to her seat at the bottom of the table, while her brother took the head.

My seat was at the right hand of Heliobas, Prince Ivan's at the left, so that we directly faced each other.
There were two men-servants in attendance, dressed in dark livery, who waited upon us with noiseless alacrity.

The dinner was exceedingly choice; there was nothing coarse or vulgar in the dishes--no great heavy joints swimming in thin gravy a la Anglaise; no tureens of unpalatable sauce; no clumsy decanters filled with burning sherry or drowsy port.