“There now, pussy—­how kind people are to your little mistress.”

Katuti was vexed daughter’s childish impulses.

“It seems to me,” she said, “that you might leave off playing and trifling when I am talking of such serious matters.  I have long since observed that the fate of the house to which your father and mother belong is a matter of perfect indifference to you; and yet you would have to seek shelter and protection under its roof if your husband—­”

“Well, mother?” asked Nefert breathing more quickly.

As soon as Katuti perceived her daughter’s agitation she regretted that she had not more gently led up to the news she had to break to her; for she loved her daughter, and knew that it would give her keen pain.

So she went on more sympathetically: 

“You boasted in joke that people are good to you, and it is true; you win hearts by your mere being—­by only being what you are.  And Mena too loved you tenderly; but ‘absence,’ says the proverb, ‘is the one real enemy,’ and Mena—­”

“What has Mena done?” Once more Nefert interrupted her mother, and her nostrils quivered.

“Mena,” said Katuti, decidedly, “has violated the truth and esteem which he owes you—­he has trodden them under foot, and—­”

“Mena?” exclaimed the young wife with flashing eyes; she flung the cat on the floor, and sprang from her couch.

“Yes—­Mena,” said Katuti firmly.  “Your brother writes that he would have neither silver nor gold for his spoil, but took the fair daughter of the prince of the Danaids into his tent.  The ignoble wretch!”

“Ignoble wretch!” cried Nefert, and two or three times she repeated her mother’s last words.  Katuti drew back in horror, for her gentle, docile, childlike daughter stood before her absolutely transfigured beyond all recognition.

She looked like a beautiful demon of revenge; her eyes sparkled, her breath came quickly, her limbs quivered, and with extraordinary strength and rapidity she seized the dwarf by the hand, led him to the door of one of the rooms which opened out of the hall, threw it open, pushed the little man over the threshold, and closed it sharply upon him; then with white lips she came up to her mother.

“An ignoble wretch did you call him?” she cried out with a hoarse husky voice, “an ignoble wretch!  Take back your words, mother, take back your words, or—­”

Katuti turned paler and paler, and said soothingly: 

“The words may sound hard, but he has broken faith with you, and openly dishonored you.”

“And shall I believe it?” said Nefert with a scornful laugh.  “Shall I believe it, because a scoundrel has written it, who has pawned his father’s body and the honor of big family; because it is told you by that noble and brave gentleman! why a box on the ears from Mena would be the death of him.  Look at me, mother, here are my eyes, and if that table there were Mena’s tent, and