on, the low entrance to the treasury was guarded by four spearmen, whose arms clanged upon the floor as the queen passed.  But she saw that the massive bolts and the huge square locks upon them were in their places.  There was no one within.  In the colonnade beyond, a few nobles stood talking carelessly together, waiting for their evening meal to be served them in a brightly illuminated hall, of which the doors stood wide open to admit the cool air of the coming night.  The magnificently-arrayed courtiers made a low obeisance and then stood in astonishment as the queen went by.  She held up her head and nodded to them, trying to look as though nothing disturbed her.

On and on she went through the whole wing, till she came to her own apartment.  Not so much as one white-robed priest had she seen upon all her long search.  Zoroaster was certainly not in the portion of the palace through, which she had come.  Entering her own chambers, she looked round for the little Syrian maid, but she had not returned.

Unable to bear the suspense any longer, she hastily despatched a second slave in search of the chief priest—­a Median woman, who had been with her in Ecbatana.

It seemed as though the minutes were lengthened to hours.  Nehushta sat with her hands pressed to her temples, that throbbed as though the fever would burst her brain, and the black fan-girl plied the palm-leaf with all her might, thinking that her mistress suffered from the heat.  The other women she dismissed; and she sat waiting beneath the soft light of the perfumed lamp, the very figure and incarnation of anxiety.

Something within her told her that she was in great and imminent danger, and the calm she had seen in the palace could not allay in her mind the terror of that unearthly cry she had heard three times from the hills.  As she thought of it, she shuddered, and the icy fear seemed to run through all her limbs, chilling the marrow in her bones, and freezing her blood suddenly in its mad course.

“Left alone with your lover”—­“it is the cry of your fate”—­Atossa’s words kept ringing in her ears like a knell—­the knell of a shameful death; and as she went over the bitter taunts of her enemy, her chilled pulses beat again more feverishly than before.  She could not bear to sit still, but rose and paced the room in intense agitation.  Would they never come back, those dallying slave-women?

The fan-girl tried to follow her mistress, and her small red eyes watched cautiously every one of Nehushta’s movements.  But the queen waved her off and the slave went and stood beside the chair where she had sat, her fan hanging idly in her hand.  At that moment, the Median woman entered the chamber.

“Where is he?” asked Nehushta, turning suddenly upon her.

The woman made a low obeisance and answered in trembling tones: 

“They say that the high priest left the palace two hours ago, with the queen Atossa.  They say——­”