“So it seems to me,” said Paaker.

Ani looked down meditatively, and continued—­Rameses is fond of comparing you with your father.  That is unfair, for he—­who is now with the justified—­was without an equal; at once the bravest of heroes and the most skilful of scribes.  You are judged unjustly; and it grieves me all the more that you belong, through your mother, to my poor but royal house.  We will see whether I cannot succeed in putting you in the right place.  For the present you are required in Syria almost as soon as you have got home.  You have shown that you are a man who does not fear death, and who can render good service, and you might now enjoy your wealth in peace with your wife.”

“I am alone,” said Paaker.

“Then, if you come home again, let Katuti seek you out the prettiest wife in Egypt,” said the Regent smiling.  “She sees herself every day in her mirror, and must be a connoisseur in the charms of women.”

Ani rose with these words, bowed to Paaker with studied friendliness, gave his hand to Katuti, and said as he left the hall: 

“Send me to-day the—­the handkerchief—­by the dwarf Nemu.”

When he was already in the garden, he turned once more and said to Paaker

“Some friends are supping with me to-day; pray let me see you too.”

The pioneer bowed; he dimly perceived that he was entangled in invisible toils.  Up to the present moment he had been proud of his devotion to his calling, of his duties as Mohar; and now he had discovered that the king, whose chain of honor hung round his neck, undervalued him, and perhaps only suffered him to fill his arduous and dangerous post for the sake of his father, while he, notwithstanding the temptations offered him in Thebes by his wealth, had accepted it willingly and disinterestedly.  He knew that his skill with the pen was small, but that was no reason why he should be despised; often had he wished that he could reconstitute his office exactly as Ani had suggested, but his petition to be allowed a secretary had been rejected by Rameses.  What he spied out, he was told was to be kept secret, and no one could be responsible for the secrecy of another.

As his brother Horus grew up, he had followed him as his obedient assistant, even after he had married a wife, who, with her child, remained in Thebes under the care of Setchem.

He was now filling Paaker’s place in Syria during his absence; badly enough, as the pioneer thought, and yet not without credit; for the fellow knew how to write smooth words with a graceful pen.

Paaker, accustomed to solitude, became absorbed in thought, forgetting everything that surrounded him; even the widow herself, who had sunk on to a couch, and was observing him in silence.

He gazed into vacancy, while a crowd of sensations rushed confusedly through his brain.  He thought himself cruelly ill-used, and he felt too that it was incumbent on him to become the instrument of a terrible fate to some other person.  All was dim ’and chaotic in his mind, his love merged in his hatred; only one thing was clear and unclouded by doubt, and that was his strong conviction that Nefert would be his.