“Lady,” began he again, a trifle more soberly, “you have fought against the bridle, but the Chaldee’s curb is too strong. To-morrow you become indeed my wife. One year in Babylon is time enough to forget Susa. You are of us now.”
“I Babylonish?” demanded Atossa, and in the last word there was a whole weight of scorn. But Belshazzar only let his eyes half close in easy good humour.
“You are a comely maid, even though Cyrus be your father. I do not repent his sending you to Babylon; for Istar’s self might stand beside you, and flush with shame. Be you who you may, you shall become my ‘first queen’; and if you are but reasonable, you will find your least wish a law to the Chaldees, no sorry thing even to a princess of the Aryans. Not so?”
“So I am to be first queen?” spoke Atossa, pointing with a finger; “but this woman—who is she?”
Belshazzar pinched the smooth arm of the maid at his side.
“Look up, my queen! The lady does not remember the day when her marvellous archer friend Darius saved you from the lion. Never since then have my soul’s eyes lost sight of you, my flower, though your father hid so carefully; and I have plucked you at last! The Persian is the lily, and you shall be the rose in my sweet nosegay!”
Atossa caught the girl roughly under the chin, and looked into her face. “Excellent taste, my king,” she taunted; “so this is the maid who is to divide honours with me. Is her father the Pharaoh, or Nadab the boatman?”
The girl shuddered out of Atossa’s grasp.
“You forget,” quoth Belshazzar, ogling from one woman to the other; “her father is no boatman, by Nergal! though, like your own, scarce now on good terms with the god of good fortune. He is Daniel, the one time civil-minister.”
All the anger vanished from Atossa’s face instantly.