er royal
descent, always rested, from early morning till late at night, on her
high brow--for a woman too high, though nobly formed--and confined the
long blue-black hair, which fell unbraided down her back, as if its
owner contemned the vain labor of arranging it artistically. But nothing
in her exterior was unpremeditated, and the unbejewelled wearer of the
diadem, in her plain dress, and with her royal figure, was everywhere
sure of being observed, and of finding imitators of her dress, and
indeed of her demeanor.

And yet Katuti had long lived in need; aye at the very hour when we
first make her acquaintance, she had little of her own, but lived on the
estate of her son-in-law as his guest, and as the administrator of his
possessions; and before the marriage of her daughter she had lived with
her children in a house belonging to her sister Setchem.

She had been the wife of her own brother,

[Marriages between brothers and sisters were allowed in ancient
Egypt. The Ptolemaic princes adopted this, which was contrary to
the Macedonian customs. When Ptolemy II. Philadelphus married his
sister Arsinoe, it seems to have been thought necessary to excuse it
by the relative positions of Venus and Saturn at that period, and
the constraining influences of these planets.]

who had died young, and who had squandered the greatest part of the
possessions which had been left to him by the new royal family, in an
extravagant love of display.

When she became a widow, she was received as a sister with her children
by her brother-in-law, Paaker's father. She lived in a house of her own,
enjoyed the income of an estate assigned to her by the old Mohar, and
left to her son-in-law the care of educating her son, a handsome and
overbearing lad, with all the claims and pretensions of a youth of
distinction.

Such great benefits would have oppressed and disgraced the proud Katuti,
if she had been content with them and in every way agreed with the
giver. But this was by no means the case; rather, she believed that she
might pretend to a more brilliant outward position, felt herself hurt
when her heedless son, while he attended school, was warned to work more
seriously, as he would by and by have to rely on his own skill and
his own strength. And it had wounded her when occasionally her
brother-in-law had suggested economy, and had reminded her, in his
straightforward way, of her narrow means, and the uncertain future