h, for the twain had little in common with the ogling village
maids, and whispers were soon busy with them.

"Look--his wife and her mother! How would you, Praxinoe, like to marry an
Isthmionices?"

"Excellently well, but your Hermas won't so honour you."

"_Eu!_ see, she lifts her pretty blue veil; I'm glad she's handsome. Some
beautiful men wed regular hags."

The two ladies were clearly mother and daughter, of the same noble height,
and dressed alike in white. Both faces were framed in a flutter of Amorgos
gauze: the mother's was saffron, crowned with a wreath of golden
wheat-ears; the daughter's blue with a circlet of violets. And now as they
stood with arms entwined the younger brushed aside her veil. The gossips
were right. The robe and the crown hid all but the face and tress of the
lustrous brown hair,--but that face! Had not King Hephaestos wrought every
line of clear Phoenician glass, then touched them with snow and rose, and
shot through all the ichor of life? Perhaps there was a fitful fire in the
dark eyes that awaited the husband's coming, or a slight twitching of the
impatient lips. But nothing disturbed the high-born repose of face and
figure. Hermione was indeed the worthy daughter of a noble house, and
happy the man who was faring homeward to Eleusis!

Another messenger. Louder bustle in the court, and the voice of Hermippus
arraying his musicians. Now a sharp-faced man, who hid his bald pate under
a crown of lilies, joined the ladies,--Conon, father of the victor. He had
ended his life-feud with Hermippus the night the message flashed from
Corinth. Then a third runner; this time in his hand a triumphant palm
branch, and his one word--"Here!" A crash of music answered from the court,
while Hermippus, a stately nobleman, his fine head just sprinkled with
gray, led out his unmartial army.

Single pipes and double pipes, tinkling lyres and many-stringed citharas,
not to forget herdsmen's reed flutes, cymbals, and tambours, all made
melody and noise together. An imposing procession that must have crammed
the courtyard wound out into the Corinth road.

Here was the demarch(2) of Eleusis, a pompous worthy, who could hardly
hold his head erect, thanks to an exceeding heavy myrtle wreath. After
him, two by two, the snowy-robed, long-bearded priests of Demeter; behind
these the noisy corps of musicians, and then a host of young men and
women,--bright of eye, graceful of movement,--twirling long chains of