ar and concise account
of himself; and, though he betrayed considerable fear, he gave no reason
for supposing that what he said was not true. As for the queen, she sat
calmly by, polishing her nails with a small instrument of ivory,
occasionally asking a question, or making a remark, as though it were
all the most natural occurrence in the world.

Darius was impetuous and fierce. His intuitive decisions were generally
right, and he acted upon them instantly, without hesitation; but he had
no cunning and little strategy. He was always for doing and never for
waiting; and to the extreme rapidity of his movements he owed the
success he had. In the first three years of his reign he fought nineteen
battles and vanquished nine self-styled kings; but he never, on any
occasion, detected a conspiracy, nor destroyed a revolution before it
had broken out openly. He was often, therefore, at the mercy of Atossa
and frequently found himself baffled by her power of concealing a subtle
lie under the letter of truth, and by her supreme indifference and
coldness of manner under the most trying circumstances. In his simple
judgment it was absolutely impossible for any one to lie directly
without betraying some hesitation, and each time he endeavoured to place
Atossa in some difficult position, when she must, he thought, inevitably
betray herself, he was met by her inexplicable calm; which he was forced
to attribute to the fact that she was in the right--no matter how the
evidence might be against her.

The king decided that he had made a mistake in the present instance and
that Phraortes was innocent of any idea of revolution. He could not
conceive how such a man should be capable of executing a daring stroke
of policy. He determined to let him go.

"You ought to be well satisfied with the result of these accounts," he
said, staring hard at Atossa. "You see you know more of your affairs,
and sooner, than you could have known if you had sent your letter. Let
this fellow go, and tell him to send his accounts regularly in future,
or he will have the pains of riding hither in haste to deliver them.
Thou mayest go now and take thy rest," he added, rising and pushing the
willing Phraortes before him out of the room.

"Thou hast done well. I am satisfied with thee, Phraortes," said Atossa
coldly.

Once more the beautiful queen was left alone, and once more she looked
at herself in the silver mirror, somewhat more critically than before.
It