His shoulders again quivered as if they had received a blow, and Iras suddenly remembered what she had long known, but never fully realized—that yonder grey-haired man loved Cleopatra, loved her as she herself loved Dion; and she wondered whether she would have been strong enough to maintain her composure if she had learned that a cruel fate threatened to rob him of life, liberty, and honour.
Hour after hour she had vainly awaited the young Alexandrian, yet he had witnessed her anxiety the day before. Had she offended him? Was he detained by the spell of Didymus’s granddaughter?
It seemed a great wrong that, amid the unspeakably terrible misfortune which had overtaken her mistress, she could not refrain from thinking continually of Dion. Even as his image filled her heart, Cleopatra’s ruled her uncle’s mind and soul, and she said to herself that it was not alone among women that love paid no heed to years, or whether the locks were brown or tinged with grey.
But Archibius now raised himself, left the couch, passed his hand across his brow, and in the deep, calm tones natural to his voice, began with a sorrowful smile: “A man stricken by an arrow leaves the fray to have his wound bandaged. The surgeon has now finished his task. I ought to have spared you this pitiable spectacle, child. But I am again ready for the battle. Cleopatra’s account of Antony’s condition renders a piece of news which we have just received somewhat more intelligible.”
“We?” replied Iras. “Who was your companion?”
“Dion,” answered Archibius; but when he was about to describe the incidents of the preceding night, she interrupted him with the question whether Barine had consented to leave the city. He assented with a curt “Yes,” but Iras assumed the manner of having expected nothing different, and requested him to continue his story.
Archibius now related everything which they had experienced, and their discovery in the pirate ship. Dion was even now on the way to carry Antony’s order to his friend Gorgias.
“Any slave might have attended to that matter equally well,” Iras remarked in an irritated tone. “I should think he would have more reason to expect trustworthy tidings here. But that’s the way with men!”
Here she hesitated but, meeting an inquiring glance from her uncle, she went on eagerly; “Nothing, I believe, binds them more firmly to one another than mutual pleasure. But that must now be over. They will seek other amusements, whether with Heliodora or Thais I care not. If the woman had only gone before! When she caught young Cæsarion——”
“Stay, child,” her uncle interrupted reprovingly. “I know how much she would rejoice if Antyllus had never brought the boy to her house.”