The Countess received her guests in a banquet-hall all ebony and gold, and was not seated permanently on a throne with a diamond crown screwed into her head as we used so fondly to imagine.

The ornament in the panel of the back of the chair is inlaid work box or ash stained to a greenish black to represent green ebony, with a few small pieces of rich red wood then in great favour; and, says Mr. G. T. Robinson, to whose article mentioned above we are indebted for the description, "probably brought by some buccaneer from the West."