isium, or
the Paneum gardens, where the beautiful women met at sunset.

The Queen was to appear immediately, and when she took her place near him
his blindness would again deprive him of the sight of her delicately cut
features, prevent his returning the glances from her sparkling eyes, and
admiring the noble outlines of her thinly veiled figure.

Would his troubled spirit at least permit him to enjoy and enter without
restraint into the play of her quick wit?

Perhaps her arrival would relieve him from the discomfort which oppressed
him here.

A stranger, out of his own sphere, he felt chilled among these closely
united men and women, to whom no tie bound him save the presence of the
same host.

He was not acquainted with a single individual except the mythograph
Crates, who for several months had been one of the members of the Museum,
and who had attached himself to Hermon at Straton's lectures.

The artist was surprised to find this man in such a circle, but he
learned from Althea that the young member of the Museum was a relative of
Proclus, and a suitor of the beautiful Nico, one of the Queen's ladies in
waiting, who was among the guests.

Crates had really been invited in order to win him over to the Queen's
cause; but charming fair-haired Nico had been commissioned by the
conspirators to persuade him to sing Arsinoe's praises among his
professional associates.

The rest of the men present stood in close connection with Arsinoe, and
were fellow-conspirators against her husband's throne and life. The
ladies whom Proclus had invited were all confidants of Arsinoe, the wives
and daughters of his other guests. All were members of the highest class
of society, and their manners showed the entire freedom from restraint
that existed in the Queen's immediate circle. Althea profited by the
advantage of being Hermon's only acquaintance here. So, when he took his
place on the cushion at her side, she greeted him familiarly and
cordially, as she had treated him for a long time, wherever they met, and
in a low voice told him, sometimes in a kindly tone, sometimes with
biting sarcasm, the names and characters of the other guests.

The most aristocratic was Amyntas, who stood highest of all in the
Queen's favour because he had good reason to hate the other Arsinoe, the
sister of the King. His son had been this royal dame's first husband, and
she had deserted him to marry Lysimachus, the aged King of Thrace.

The Rhod