CHAPTER XV
ANDROMACHÉ
The next night Manasseh and Charidemus presented themselves at Barsiné’s house. Both men were extremely anxious. Further delay, they felt, was impossible. Any hour the unhappy lady might find whatever chance she had irretrievably lost. They did not augur well for her decision that she kept them waiting for nearly an hour after their coming had been announced to her; nor from her first words when at last she appeared.
“The Macedonian has not yet come, has he?” she asked.
“Madam,” replied Charidemus, “the king arrived this afternoon.”
She wrung her hands in silence.
“And to-morrow the governor of the city will present him with the list of the property and persons left here by King Darius. This will be compared with the list already made by Parmenio.”
“But my name may not be in it,” she eagerly interposed.
“Madam,” said Manasseh, “do not flatter yourself with such a hope. The widow of the man who commanded the Great King’s forces is far too important a person to be forgotten. You may depend upon it that there is no one in the whole kingdom, except, it may be, the wife and child of Darius himself, whom the king is more bent on getting into his possession than the widow of Memnon the Rhodian.”