"Nothing! I will go to my room, mother."
Katuti kissed her and said, "Hear first what your brother writes."
But Nefert shook her head, turned away in silence, and disappeared into the house.
Katuti was not very friendly to her son-in-law, but her heart clung to her handsome, reckless son, the very image of her lost husband, the favorite of women, and the gayest youth among the young nobles who composed the chariot-guard of the king.
How fully he had written to-day—he who weilded the reed-pen so laboriously.
This really was a letter; while, usually, he only asked in the fewest words for fresh funds for the gratification of his extravagant tastes.
This time she might look for thanks, for not long since he must have received a considerable supply, which she had abstracted from the income of the possessions entrusted to her by her son-in-law.
She began to read.
The cheerfulness, with which she had met the dwarf, was insincere, and had resembled the brilliant colors of the rainbow, which gleam over the stagnant waters of a bog. A stone falls into the pool, the colors vanish, dim mists rise up, and it becomes foul and clouded.
The news which her son's letter contained fell, indeed, like a block of stone on Katuti's soul.