it them to see it. Only it was a relief to her heart
when some of her evil forebodings were realized, to say that she had
foreseen it all.

No trace of this was legible in her face, a countenance still pretty and
pleasing in its unruffled placidity. She talked very little, but what
she did say was sensible, and proved how attentively she understood
how to listen. So she was welcome among Barine's guests. Even the most
distinguished received something from her, because he felt that the
quiet woman understood him.

Before Barine had returned that evening, something had occurred which
made her mother doubly regret the accident to her brother Arius the
day before. On his way home from his sister's he had been run over by
a chariot darting recklessly along the Street of the King, and was
carried, severely injured, to his home, where he now lay helpless and
fevered. Nor did it lessen his sufferings to hear his two sons threaten
to take vengeance on the reckless fellow who had wrought their father
this mischief, for he had reason to believe Antyllus the perpetrator of
the deed, and a collision between the youths and the son of Antony could
only result in fresh disaster to him and his, especially as the young
Roman seemed to have inherited little of his father's magnanimous
generosity. Yet Arius could not be vexed with his sons for stigmatizing,
in the harshest terms, the conduct of the man who had gone on without
heeding the accident. He had cautioned his sister against the utterly
unbridled youth whose father he had himself brought to her house. With
what good reason he had raised his voice in warning was now evident. At
sunset that very day several guests had arrived as usual, followed by
Antyllus, a youth of nineteen. When the door-keeper refused to admit
him, he had rudely demanded to see Barine, thrust aside the prudent
old porter, who endeavoured to detain him, and, in spite of his
protestations, forced his way into his dead master's work-room, where
the ladies usually received their visitors. Not until he found it empty
would he retire, and then he first fastened a bouquet of flowers he had
brought to a statue of Eros in burnt clay, which stood there. Both the
porter and Barine's waiting-maid declared that he was drunk; they saw it
when he staggered away with the companions who had waited for him in the
garden outside.

This unseemly and insulting conduct filled Berenike with the deepest
indignation. It must not rema