“O, Osirus, I swear to Thee, to obey the will of my father the King.”
Like a falcon, that needs but the loosing of the silken thread, that it may lift its wings and mount into the blue, the soul of Tothmes the First, upon the promise of his child, soared upward, and was not; and her cry of anguish told to those who stood without that the time had come in which to proclaim the reign of Tothmes the Second.
CHAPTER II.
The seventy-two days of mourning for the dead had been accomplished, the oblations and purifications of the living had been performed.
Again it was night in the Palace of Tears.
The ladies-in-waiting upon the Princess Hatsu were weary of the funeral pomp and circumstance by which they had been for so many weeks environed, and one and all hailed with delight the prospect of beginning on the morrow, the journey back to Thebes, where their royal mistress was to wed the now reigning King of Egypt.
So they had happy thoughts, as they silently regarded Her Highness, who, with her favorite serving maid, standing behind her chair, sat by one of the narrow windows, her arm upon the sill, her hand forming a rest for her face, as she looked out on the river and the palace garden, bathed in the splendor of a full moon’s light.
The maid behind the Princess’ chair was a girl whose appearance was in marked contrast, through its race characteristics, to the other women present. Her skin, unlike the Egyptian ladies’, was devoid of yellow tinting, and its whiteness was the more marked because of the faint rose bloom on cheek and lip. Her hair, rippling on either side of her broad brow, was brown in color, and its two heavy braids fell to the hem of her gown.
Her large blue eyes were shaded by long golden brown lashes; her eyebrows, strongly arched, were black.