her and
daughter had been somewhat overhasty and imprudent in their advances and
he had at first received Karnis with considerable reserve; but after a
short interview he had convinced himself that the musician was a man of
unusual culture and superior stamp. The old lady had, from the first,
been predisposed in his favor, for she had read in the stars last night
that the day was to bring her a fortunate meeting. Her wish was law, and
Karnis could not help smiling when she addressed her son, whose hair had
long been grey and who looked fully competent to manage his own
household, as "my child," not hesitating to scold and reprove him. Her
cathedra was a high arm-chair which she never quitted but to be carried
to her observatory on the roof of the house, where she kept her
astrological tablets and manuscripts. The only weakness about her was in
her feet; but strong, and willing arms were always at her disposal to
carry her about--to table, into her sleeping-room, and during the daytime
out to sunny spots in the garden. She was never so happy as when Helios
warmed her back with his rays, for her old blood needed it after the long
night-watches that she still would keep in her observatory. Even during
the hottest noon she would sit in the sun, with a large green umbrella to
shade her keen eyes, and those who desired to speak with her might find
shade as best they could. As she stood, much bent, but propped on her
ivory crutches, eagerly following every word of a conversation, she
looked as though she were prepared at any moment to spring into the
middle of it and interrupt the speaker. She always said exactly what she
meant without reserve or ruth; and throughout her long life, as the
mistress of great wealth, she had always been allowed to have her own
way. She asserted her rights even over her son, though he was the centre
of a web whose threads reached to the furthest circumference of the known
world. The peasants who tilled the earth by the Upper and Lower Nile, the
shepherds who kept their flocks in the Arabian desert, in Syria, or on
the Silphium meads of Cyrenaica, the wood-cutters of Lebanon and Pontus,
the mountaineers of Hispania and Sardinia, the brokers, merchants, and
skippers of every port on the Mediterranean, were bound by these threads
to the villa on the shore of Mareotis, and felt the tie when the master
there--docile as a boy to his mother's will--tightened or released his
hold.

His possessions, even i