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Updated: April 30, 2025
Aside from these there were others in the group. Some were sons and daughters of royalty, cousins of the Pharaoh's sons and of Ta-user and Siptah; many were children of the king's ministers, and all were noble. Senci and Hotep's older sister, the Lady Bettis, a dark-eyed matron of thirty, presided in duenna-like guardianship over the rout. They sat in a diphros apart from the young revelers.
Then, without further counsel with the murket, he went silently and unseen to the portal of Senci's house. After a long time, for her household had been asleep, he was admitted, and the Lady Senci, perplexed and surprised, joined him in the chamber of guests.
Senci sat with Ta-meri's head in her lap, and three or four drowsy little girls were tumbled about her feet. Only Io was wide awake, and even her sweet face wore a pensive air. Kenkenes had retired to the stern, where, under the high up-standing end, stood a long wooden bench.
"Hail! thou son of the murket!" she said. "Having much, I am given more," he responded. "Behold the prodigality of good fortune. The Hathors exalt me in the world and add thereto a kiss from the Lady Senci." "I was impelled truly," she confessed, "but by thine own face as well as by the Hathors.
The dusk fell and the shadows of night were made seductive by the dim lamps that began to burn from mast-top and prow. On the barge of Senci only a single and subdued light was swung from a bronze tripod in the bow, and the fourteen charges of the young sculptor, wearied with the long day's excitement, were disposed in graceful abandon under its glow.
An hour after the next day's sunrise Mentu and Senci repaired together to the temple, and when they returned Senci went not again into her own house. In preparing for his departure, Kenkenes asked at the hands of his father, not his patrimony, for that would have been an embarrassment of wealth, but such portion of it as might be carried in small bulk.
Ta-meri was more than usually brilliant, and Nechutes, flushed with her favor, was playing splendidly and rejoicing beyond reason over his gains. Opposite this group was another, the center of which was Masanath. She sat in the richest seat in the house of Senci.
Hotep waited in the house of his aunt, neighbor to the murket, and about the middle of the first watch asked again for Kenkenes. Nay, the young master had not returned. But would not the noble Hotep enter and await him? The scribe, however, returned to the palace, and put off his visit until the next day. The following noon a page brought him a message from his aunt, the Lady Senci.
"The Lady Senci wishes me to prepare plans for the further elaboration of her tomb," he went on, at last, "but the work on the obelisk may not be laid aside. If I might trust you to go on with them, the Lady Senci need not wait." "But I have, this moment, been summoned by my holy uncle, Asar-Mut, to go on a journey, and I know not when I return," Kenkenes explained.
It was the one graceful act in the life of the feeble king, the one resolution to which he held most tenaciously. Though Mentu's union with Senci was short, it was most happy, save perhaps for the absence of Kenkenes. But after the letter came from the well-beloved son there was more cheer in the heart of the father.
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