"The stranger?" John asked. "Is she still with you?"
"I mean to add her to my household, if you will," she explained.
"Keep her or dismiss her at your pleasure."
"It shall be for my pleasure. She has a charm that besets me. It will be entertainment to discover her history."
"I see no mystery in her. It is plain enough that there is between her and this married Philadelphus some cause for her coming. His wife is much more engaging."
She sighed and dropped into her ivory chair, pushed back the locks of fair hair that had loosened from their fillet and waited languidly.
John studied her critically. In the last hour the slowly dissolving bond between them seemed to have vanished, wholly, at once.
"O Queen of Kings," he said, "art thou lonely in this mad place?"
"I have found diversion," she answered.
"With these new guests?"