m
were in their places. There was no one within. In the colonnade beyond,
a few nobles stood talking carelessly together, waiting for their
evening meal to be served them in a brightly illuminated hall, of which
the doors stood wide open to admit the cool air of the coming night. The
magnificently-arrayed courtiers made a low obeisance and then stood in
astonishment as the queen went by. She held up her head and nodded to
them, trying to look as though nothing disturbed her.

On and on she went through the whole wing, till she came to her own
apartment. Not so much as one white-robed priest had she seen upon all
her long search. Zoroaster was certainly not in the portion of the
palace through, which she had come. Entering her own chambers, she
looked round for the little Syrian maid, but she had not returned.

Unable to bear the suspense any longer, she hastily despatched a second
slave in search of the chief priest--a Median woman, who had been with
her in Ecbatana.

It seemed as though the minutes were lengthened to hours. Nehushta sat
with her hands pressed to her temples, that throbbed as though the fever
would burst her brain, and the black fan-girl plied the palm-leaf with
all her might, thinking that her mistress suffered from the heat. The
other women she dismissed; and she sat waiting beneath the soft light of
the perfumed lamp, the very figure and incarnation of anxiety.

Something within her told her that she was in great and imminent danger,
and the calm she had seen in the palace could not allay in her mind the
terror of that unearthly cry she had heard three times from the hills.
As she thought of it, she shuddered, and the icy fear seemed to run
through all her limbs, chilling the marrow in her bones, and freezing
her blood suddenly in its mad course.

"Left alone with your lover"--"it is the cry of your fate"--Atossa's
words kept ringing in her ears like a knell--the knell of a shameful
death; and as she went over the bitter taunts of her enemy, her chilled
pulses beat again more feverishly than before. She could not bear to sit
still, but rose and paced the room in intense agitation. Would they
never come back, those dallying slave-women?

The fan-girl tried to follow her mistress, and her small red eyes
watched cautiously every one of Nehushta's movements. But the queen
waved her off and the slave went and stood beside the chair where she
had sat, her fan hanging idly in her hand. At that moment,