een compelled to leave the city on the day after
his last visit.

Berenike had reproved her brother for bringing the Queen's lover to
Barine, for her anxiety was increased by the repeated visits of Antony's
son, and still more aroused by that of Caesarion, who was presented by
Antyllus.

These youths were not numbered among the guests whose presence she
welcomed and whose conversation afforded her pleasure. It was flattering
that they should honour her simple home by their visits, but she knew
that Caesarion came without his tutor's knowledge, and perceived, by the
expression of his eyes, what drew him to her daughter. Besides, Berenike,
in rearing the two children, who had been the source of so much anxiety
had lost the joyous confidence which had characterized her own youth.
Whenever life presented any new phase, she saw the dark side first. If a
burning candle stood before her, the shadow of the candlestick caught her
eye before the light. Her whole mental existence became a chain of fears,
but the kind-hearted woman loved her children too tenderly to permit them
to see it. Only it was a relief to her heart when some of her evil
forebodings were realized, to say that she had foreseen it all.

No trace of this was legible in her face, a countenance still pretty and
pleasing in its unruffled placidity. She talked very little, but what she
did say was sensible, and proved how attentively she understood how to
listen. So she was welcome among Barine's guests. Even the most
distinguished received something from her, because he felt that the quiet
woman understood him.

Before Barine had returned that evening, something had occurred which
made her mother doubly regret the accident to her brother Arius the day
before. On his way home from his sister's he had been run over by a
chariot darting recklessly along the Street of the King, and was carried,
severely injured, to his home, where he now lay helpless and fevered. Nor
did it lessen his sufferings to hear his two sons threaten to take
vengeance on the reckless fellow who had wrought their father this
mischief, for he had reason to believe Antyllus the perpetrator of the
deed, and a collision between the youths and the son of Antony could only
result in fresh disaster to him and his, especially as the young Roman
seemed to have inherited little of his father's magnanimous generosity.
Yet Arius could not be vexed with his sons for stigmatizing, in the
harshest terms, t