ed, he paced the room with long strides, even
forgetting to bow before the Cross.

"A life-guard! that she shall have! But not a few thousand men; many
thousands--more than she will like; and you, Belisarias, shall lead
them."

"Deign to look at the presents," said Alexandros, pointing to a costly
shrine of cypress-wood, inlaid with gold, which a slave had set down
behind him. "Here is the key."

And he held out a little box of tortoise-shell, which was closed with
the Queen's seal.

"Her picture is there too," he said, raising his voice as if by
accident.

At the moment in which Alexandros raised his voice, the head of a woman
was protruded gently and unnoticed through the curtain, and two
sparkling black eyes looked keenly at the Emperor.

Justinian opened the shrine, quickly pushed aside its costly contents,
and hastily caught up a simple tablet of polished box-wood, with a
small golden frame.

A cry of astonishment involuntarily burst from his lips, his eyes
sparkled, and he showed the picture to Belisarius.

"A splendid woman! What majesty on her brow! One sees that she is a
born ruler--a king's daughter!" and he gazed admiringly at the noble
features.

The curtain rustled, and the listener entered.

It was Theodora, the Empress. A seductive apparition.

All the arts of woman's inventive genius in a time of refined luxury,
and all the means of an empire, were daily called into requisition, in
order to keep the beauty of this woman--who had impaired it only too
much by a life of unbridled sensuality--fresh and dazzling. Gold-dust
gave to her blue-black hair a metallic brilliancy; it was carefully
combed up from the nape of her neck, in order to show the beautiful
shape of her head, and its fine set upon her shoulders. Her eyebrows
and eye-lashes were dyed black with Arabian antimony; and so carefully
was the red of her lips put on, that even Justinian, who kissed those
lips, never suspected an aid to Nature by means of Ph[oe]nician
scarlet. Every tiny hair on her alabaster arm had been carefully
destroyed: and the delicate rose-colour of her finger-nails was the
daily care of a specially-appointed slave.

And yet, without all these arts, Theodora, who was not yet forty years
of age, would have passed for an extremely lovely woman. Her
countenance was certainly not noble; no noble, or even proud spirit,
spoke from her fatigued and weirdly shining eyes; round her lips played
an habitual smile, the dim