ou have deceived me!" said Katuti with a threatening gesture as she
passed his perch.

"Put me on a hook to angle for a crocodile if I have. But I am curious to
know how he will offer you the money."

"You swore to me," interrupted his mistress with feverish agitation, that
you had not used my name in asking Paaker to save us?"

"A thousand times I swear it," said the little man.

"Shall I repeat all our conversation? I tell thee he will sacrifice his
land, and his house-great gate and all, for one friendly glance from
Nefert's eyes."

"If only Mena loved her as he does!" sighed the widow, and then again she
walked up and down the hall in silence, while the dwarf looked out at the
garden entrance. Suddenly she paused in front of Nemu, and said so
hoarsely that Nemu shuddered:

"I wish she were a widow." "The little man made a gesture as if to
protect himself from the evil eye, but at the same instant he slipped
down from his pedestal, and exclaimed:

"There is a chariot, and I hear his big dog barking. It is he. Shall I
call Nefert?"

"No!" said Katuti in a low voice, and she clutched at the back of a chair
as if for support.

The dwarf shrugged his shoulders, and slunk behind a clump of ornamental
plants, and a few minutes later Paaker stood in the presence of Katuti,
who greeted him, with quiet dignity and self-possession.

Not a feature of her finely-cut face betrayed her inward agitation, and
after the Mohar had greeted her she said with rather patronizing
friendliness:

"I thought that you would come. Take a seat. Your heart is like your
father's; now that you are friends with us again it is not by halves."

Paaker had come to offer his aunt the sum which was necessary for the
redemption of her husband's mummy. He had doubted for a long time whether
he should not leave this to his mother, but reserve partly and partly
vanity had kept him from doing so. He liked to display his wealth, and
Katuti should learn what he could do, what a son-in-law she had rejected.

He would have preferred to send the gold, which he had resolved to give
away, by the hand of one of his slaves, like a tributary prince. But that
could not be done so he put on his finger a ring set with a valuable
stone, which king Seti I., had given to his father, and added various
clasps and bracelets to his dress.

When, before leaving the house, he looked at himself in a mirror, he said
to himself with some satisfaction, that he, as he