t her dresses
that would make the rose-garment look a rag. You would have gold too, as
much gold as heart can wish. I can take you there, and he will meet you
with open arms."

"What, this evening?" cried Dada, and the blue veins swelled on her white
forehead. "You hateful, brown serpent! Did Gorgo teach you such things as
this? It is horrible, disgraceful, sickening!"

So base a proposal was the last thing she would ever have expected from
Marcus--of all men in the world, Marcus, whom she had imagined so good
and pure! She could not believe it; and as her glance met the cunning
glitter of the Egyptian's eyes her own sparkled keenly, and she exclaimed
with a vehemence and decision which her attendant had never suspected in
her:

"It is deceit and falsehood from beginning to end! Go, woman, I will hear
no more of it. Why should Marcus have come to you since yesterday if he
does not know where I am? You are silent--you will not say? . . . Oh! I
understand it all. He--I know he would never have ventured it. But it is
your 'noble lady Damia'--that old woman, who has told you what to say.
You are her echo, and as for Marcus. . . . Confess, confess at once, you
witch. . . ."

"Sachepris is only a poor slave," said the woman raising her hands in
entreaty. "Sachepris can only obey, and if the pretty mistress were to
tell my lady Damia . . ."

"It was she then who sent for me to go to the little tavern?"

The woman nodded. "And Marcus?"

"If the pretty mistress had consented . . ."

"Well?"

"Then--but Great Isis! if you tell of me!"

"I will not tell; go on."

"I should have gone to my lord Marcus and invited him, from you . . ."

"It is shameful!" interrupted Dada, and a shudder ran through her slight
frame. "How cruel, how horrible it is! You--you will stay here till the
others come home and then you will go home to the old woman. I thank the
gods, I have two hands and need no maid to wait upon me! But look
there--what is the meaning of that? That pretty litter has stopped and
there is an old man signing to you."

"It is the widow Mary's house steward," whined the woman, while Dada
turned pale, wondering what a messenger from Marcus' mother could want
here.

Herse, who had kept a watchful eye on the landing-plank, on Dada's
account, had also seen the approach of the widow's messenger and
suspected a love-message from Marcus; but she was utterly astounded when
the old man politely but imperiously desired her