r, had
been Charmian's lover; but this did not justify her favouring the woman
who had robbed her niece of the heart of the man whom she--as Charmian
knew--had loved from childhood.

Charmian had just had a long conversation with her brother, and had also
learned in the palace that Barine had been summoned to the Queen's
presence in the middle of the night; so, firmly persuaded that evil was
intended to the young woman who had already passed through so many
agitating scenes of joy and sorrow, she entered the waiting-room, and her
pleasant though no longer youthful face, framed in smooth, grey hair, was
greeted by Barine as the shipwrecked mariner hails the sight of land.

All the emotions which had darkened and embittered her soul were soothed.
She hastened towards her friend's sister, as a frightened child seeks its
mother, and Charmian perceived what was stirring in her heart.

It would not do, under existing circumstances, to kiss her in the palace,
but she drew Leonax's daughter towards her to show Iras that she was
ready to extend a protecting hand over the persecuted woman. But Barine
gazed at her with pleading glances, beseeching aid, whispering amid her
tears: "Help me, Charmian. She has tortured, insulted, humiliated me with
looks and words--so cruelly, so spitefully! Help me; I can bear no more."

Charmian shook her kind head and urged her in a whisper to calm herself.
She had robbed Iras of her lover; she should remember that. Cost what it
might, she must not shed another tear. The Queen was gracious. She,
Charmian, would aid her. Everything would depend on showing herself to
Cleopatra as she was, not as slander represented her. She must answer her
as she would Archibius or herself.

The kindly woman, as she spoke, stroked her brow and eyes with maternal
tenderness, and Barine felt as if goodness itself had quelled the tempest
in her soul. She gazed around her as though roused from a troubled dream,
and now for the first time perceived the richly adorned room in which she
stood, the admiring glances of the boys in the Macedonian corps of pages,
and the bright fire blazing cheerily on the hearth. The howling of the
storm increased the pleasant sense of being under a firm roof, and Iras,
who had whispered to the "introducer" at the door, no longer seemed like
a sharp thorn or a spiteful demon, but a woman by no means destitute of
charm, who repulsed her, but on whom she had inflicted the keenest pang a
woma