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Katuti was vexed daughter's childish impulses. "It seems to me," she said, "that you might leave off playing and trifling when I am talking of such serious matters. I have long since observed that the fate of the house to which your father and mother belong is a matter of perfect indifference to you; and yet you would have to seek shelter and protection under its roof if your husband "
Katuti collected herself, turned to him, and tried to speak; but her pale lips remained closed, and her eyes gazed dimly into vacancy as though a catalepsy had seized her. "Mistress! Mistress!" cried the dwarf again, with growing agitation. "What is the matter? shall I call thy daughter?" Katuti made a sign with her hand, and cried feebly: "The wretches! the reprobates!"
"My father," she continued, after a few introductory words, "informs me that the Regent Ani desires me for his wife, and advises me to reward the fidelity of the worthy man with my hand. He advises it, you understand- he does not command." "And thou?" asked Katuti. "And I," replied Bent-Anat decidedly, "must refuse him." "Thou must!"
"You are like this grand hall," said Katuti smiling, "which is now empty, almost dismal; but this evening, when it is crowded with guests, it will look very different. You were born to be a king, and yet are not a king; you will not be quite yourself till the crown and sceptre are your own."
How the girl for whom I would have given my life the porter's daughter, laughed when I, dressed up in motley, hopped panting in front of the chariot and the young lord's whip whistled in my ears wringing the sweat from my brow, and the blood from my broken heart. Then Mena's father died, the boy, went to school, and I waited on the wife of his steward, whom Katuti banished to Hermonthis.
"And in speaking ill of you, his only motive was to raise his favorite in Nefert's estimation." "Tell me what he said!" cried the pioneer; cold drops stood on his brown forehead, and his glaring eyes showed the white eye-balls. Katuti quailed before him, and drew back, but he followed her, seized her arm, and said huskily: "What did he say?" "Paaker!" cried the widow in pain and indignation.
Then she went up to the table, begged Paaker to sit down with her, broke her cake, and enquired for her aunt Setchern, Paaker's mother. Katuti and Paaker watched all her movements with beating hearts. Now she took up the beaker, and lifted it to her lips, but set it down again to answer Paaker's remark that she was breakfasting late.
Thou mayst be glad that thou hast not linked thy fate to ours; but I have a faithful heart, and will share my mistress's trouble." "You speak riddles," said Paaker, "what have they to fear?" The dwarf now related how Nefert's brother had gambled away the mummy of his father, how enormous was the sum he had lost, and that degradation must overtake Katuti, and her daughter with her.
Katuti met the Regent half way down the garden. He held a manuscript roll in his hand, and greeted her from afar with a friendly wave of his hand. The widow looked at him with astonishment. It seemed to her that he had grown taller and younger since the last time she had seen him.
"Your brother writes that he would have neither silver nor gold for his spoil, but took the fair daughter of the prince of the Danaids into his tent. The ignoble wretch!" "Ignoble wretch!" cried Nefert, and two or three times she repeated her mother's last words. Katuti drew back in horror, for her gentle, docile, childlike daughter stood before her absolutely transfigured beyond all recognition.
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