COLUMBUS IN LOVE

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Isabella wore a silken embroidered dress and train, open in front to show a quilted petticoat of blue velvet with rows of pearl crosses ; her belt was of Damascus-work with silver filigree in tone like her silvery dress, and her corsage, cut nearly square, revealed upon her bosom and its lace bordering a necklace of blue sapphires and diamonds. Her head-dress was the small Spanish cap of white lace, showing her copious red hair in front and back.
Her maids behind her chair were only four, dressed nearly the same as their queen.
King Ferdinand sat beside her, and when she rose and advanced a step on public business he rose but advanced not.
Ferdinand looked the younger, and his attire was so plain that his good-natured and animated face, fresh from a morning ride upon the sierra, was a spot of pleasing light in that high-windowed room. He acted as if he had nothing to do but to attend his wife, the sole sovereign of Castile, and this easy indolence gave a boyish demureness, like comedy, to his open, white, child-like forehead, with its long curls of chestnut hair. Pretty were his mouth and nose, in keeping with this unaggressive face and eyes like the morning sky. He wore a sort of dressing-gown or state robe, bordered with a fur like his hair, its sleeves and breast figured in low tone, and his small plain collar was turned over at the throat.
He was but thirty-six years of age, and had been married to Queen Isabella nearly half his life. To obtain her, the great prize of politics, he had let his education go, and to retain and consolidate their power he had fought and planned nearly all their reign. Love, that was once their romance, had become a partnership.
He hunted ...

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