Beyond this red-hung barrier lay a gradual slope of faces, white and motionless; a glimmer of steel bounded it, and above, a third of the distance down the transept, rose in solemn serried array a line of canopies.

These were of scarlet, like cardinalitial baldachini, but upon the upright surface of each burned gigantic coats supported by beasts and topped by crowns.

Under each was a figure or two--no more--in splendid isolation, and through the interspaces between the thrones showed again a misty slope of faces.
His heart quickened as he saw it--as he swept his eyes round and across to the right and saw as in a mirror the replica of the left in the right transept.

It was there then that they sat--those lonely survivors of that strange company of persons who, till half-a-century ago, had reigned as God's temporal Vicegerents with the consent of their subjects.

They were unrecognised, now, save by Him from whom they drew their sovereignty--pinnacles clustering and hanging from a dome, from which the walls had been withdrawn.