“They were scarcely visible before,” was the reply, “and even the keenest eye could no longer discover them. I have brought the pomade, too, and the prescription Olympus gave me for——”
“Hush, hush!” interrupted Cleopatra softly. “There are many living creatures in this garden, and they say that even the birds are good listeners.”
A roguish smile deepened the dimples in her cheeks as she spoke, and delight in her bewitching grace forced from Charmian’s lips the exclamation:
“If Mark Antony could only see you now!”
“Flatterer!” replied the Queen with a grateful smile. But Charmian felt that the time had now come to plead once more for Barine, and she began eagerly:
“No, I certainly do not flatter. No one in Alexandria, no matter what name she bears, could venture to vie even remotely with your charms. So cease the persecution of the unfortunate woman whom you confided to my care. It is an insult to Cleopatra——”
But here an indignant “Again!” interrupted her.
Cleopatra’s face, which during the conversation had mirrored every emotion of a woman’s soul, from the deepest sorrow to the most mischievous mirth, assumed an expression of repellent harshness, and, with the curt remark, “You are forgetting what I had good reason to forbid—I must go to my work,” she turned her back upon the companion of her youth.
CHAPTER XV.
Charmain went towards her own apartments. How often she had had a similar experience! In the midst of the warmest admiration for this rare woman’s depth of feeling, masculine strength of intellect, tireless industry, watchful care for her native land, steadfast loyalty, and maternal devotion, she had been sobered in the most pitiable way.