Then, leading the way to the house, he showed her as her future apartments two large whitewashed rooms, whose sole ornament was their exquisite neatness.  On the threshold stood Pyrrhus’s grey-haired wife, a young woman, and a girl scarcely beyond childhood; but the older one modestly welcomed Barine, and also begged her to accept their hospitality.  Recovery was rapid in the pure air of the Serpent Isle.  She herself, and—­she pointed to the others—­her oldest son’s wife, and her own daughter, Dione, would be ready to render her any service.

CHAPTER XVI.

Brothers and sisters are rarely talkative when they are together.  As Charmian went to Lochias with Archibius, it was difficult for her to find words, the events of the past few hours had agitated her so deeply.  Archibius, too, could not succeed in turning his thoughts in any other direction, though important and far more momentous things claimed his attention.

They walked on silently side by side.  In reply to his sister’s inquiry where the newly wedded pair were to be concealed, he had answered that, spite of her trustworthiness, this must remain a secret.  To her second query, how had it been possible to use the interior of the Temple of Isis without interruption, he also made a guarded reply.

In fact, it was the control of the subterranean corridors of the sanctuary which had suggested to Gorgias the idea of carrying Dion through them to Pyrrhus’s fishing-boat.  To accomplish this it was only necessary to have the Temple of Isis, which usually remained open day and night, left to the fugitive’s friends for a short time; and this was successfully managed.

The historian Timagenes, who had come from Rome as ambassador and claimed the hospitality of his former pupil Archibius, had been empowered to offer Cleopatra recognition of her own and her children’s right to the throne, and a full pardon, if she would deliver Mark Antony into the hands of Octavianus, or have him put to death.

The Alexandrian Timagenes considered this demand both just and desirable, because it promised to deliver his native city from the man whose despotic arrogance menaced its freedom, and whose lavish generosity and boundless love of splendour diminished its wealth.  To Rome, as whose representative the historian appeared, this man’s mere existence meant constant turmoil and civil war.  At the restoration of the flute-player by Gabinius and Mark Antony, Timagenes had been carried into slavery.  Later, when, after his freedom had been purchased by the son of Sulla, he succeeded in attaining great influence in Rome, he still remained hostile to Mark Antony, and it had been a welcome charge to work against him in Alexandria.  He hoped to find an ally in Archibius, whose loyal devotion to the Queen he knew.  Arius, Barine’s uncle and Octavianus’s former tutor, would also aid him.  The most powerful support of his mission,