greatly
burthened with debt by his father.

Fate put the means into her hands of indemnifying herself and her
children for many past privations, and she availed herself of them to
gratify her innate desire to be esteemed and admired; to obtain admission
for her son, splendidly equipped, into a company of chariot-warriors of
the highest class; and to surround her daughter with princely
magnificence.

When the Regent, who had been a friend of her late husband, removed into
the palace of the Pharaohs, he made her advances, and the clever and
decided woman knew how to make herself at first agreeable, and finally
indispensable, to the vacillating man.

She availed herself of the circumstance that she, as well as he, was
descended from the old royal house to pique his ambition, and to open to
him a view, which even to think of, he would have considered forbidden as
a crime, before he became intimate with her.

Ani's suit for the hand of the princess Bent-Anat was Katuti's work. She
hoped that the Pharoah would refuse, and personally offend the Regent,
and so make him more inclined to tread the dangerous road which she was
endeavoring to smooth for him. The dwarf Nemu was her pliant tool.

She had not initiated him into her projects by any words; he however gave
utterance to every impulse of her mind in free language, which was
punished only with blows from a fan, and, only the day before, had been
so audacious as to say that if the Pharoah were called Ani instead of
Rameses, Katuti would be not a queen but a goddess for she would then
have not to obey, but rather to guide, the Pharaoh, who indeed himself
was related to the Immortals.

Katuti did not observe her daughter's blush, for she was looking
anxiously out at the garden gate, and said:

"Where can Nemu be! There must be some news arrived for us from the
army."

"Mena has not written for so long," Nefert said softly. "Ah! here is the
steward!"

Katuti turned to the officer, who had entered the veranda through a side
door:

"What do you bring," she asked.

"The dealer Abscha," was the answer, "presses for payment. The new Syrian
chariot and the purple cloth--"

"Sell some corn," ordered Katuti.

"Impossible, for the tribute to the temples is not yet paid, and already
so much has been delivered to the dealers that scarcely enough remains
over for the maintenance of the household and for sowing."

"Then pay with beasts."

"But, madam," said the steward