ttle mistress."

Katuti was vexed daughter's childish impulses.

"It seems to me," she said, "that you might leave off playing and
trifling when I am talking of such serious matters. I have long since
observed that the fate of the house to which your father and mother
belong is a matter of perfect indifference to you; and yet you would have
to seek shelter and protection under its roof if your husband--"

"Well, mother?" asked Nefert breathing more quickly.

As soon as Katuti perceived her daughter's agitation she regretted that
she had not more gently led up to the news she had to break to her; for
she loved her daughter, and knew that it would give her keen pain.

So she went on more sympathetically:

"You boasted in joke that people are good to you, and it is true; you win
hearts by your mere being--by only being what you are. And Mena too loved
you tenderly; but 'absence,' says the proverb, 'is the one real enemy,'
and Mena--"

"What has Mena done?" Once more Nefert interrupted her mother, and her
nostrils quivered.

"Mena," said Katuti, decidedly, "has violated the truth and esteem which
he owes you--he has trodden them under foot, and--"

"Mena?" exclaimed the young wife with flashing eyes; she flung the cat on
the floor, and sprang from her couch.

"Yes--Mena," said Katuti firmly. "Your brother writes that he would have
neither silver nor gold for his spoil, but took the fair daughter of the
prince of the Danaids into his tent. The ignoble wretch!"

"Ignoble wretch!" cried Nefert, and two or three times she repeated her
mother's last words. Katuti drew back in horror, for her gentle, docile,
childlike daughter stood before her absolutely transfigured beyond all
recognition.

She looked like a beautiful demon of revenge; her eyes sparkled, her
breath came quickly, her limbs quivered, and with extraordinary strength
and rapidity she seized the dwarf by the hand, led him to the door of one
of the rooms which opened out of the hall, threw it open, pushed the
little man over the threshold, and closed it sharply upon him; then with
white lips she came up to her mother.

"An ignoble wretch did you call him?" she cried out with a hoarse husky
voice, "an ignoble wretch! Take back your words, mother, take back your
words, or--"

Katuti turned paler and paler, and said soothingly:

"The words may sound hard, but he has broken faith with you, and openly
dishonored you."

"And shall I believe it?" said Nef