“And where was a poor little girl like that to find the talents which it would cost to procure the costume of an Asiatic princess, Alexander’s bride?”

“Plutarch, and the prefect’s wife had undertaken that.”

“A mere beggar.”

“How well the family jewels would have suited our daughters!”

“Do we want to show Caesar nothing but a few silly pretty faces?—­and not something of our wealth and taste?”

“Supposing Hadrian asks who this Roxana is, and had to be told that a collection had to be made to get her a proper costume.”

“Such things never could happen anywhere but in Alexandria.”

“Every one wants to know whether she worked in Plutarch’s factory.  They say it is not true—­but the painted old villain still loves a pretty face.  He smuggled her in, you may be sure; where there is smoke there is fire, and it is beyond a doubt that she gets money from the old man.”

“What for?”

“Ah! you had better enquire of a priest of Aphrodite.  It is nothing to laugh at, it is scandalous, audacious!”

Thus and on this wise ran the comments with which the announcement of Arsinoe’s preferment to the part of Roxana was received, and hatred and bitter animosity had grown up in the souls of the dealer and his daughter.  Praxilla was selected as a companion to Alexander’s bride, and she yielded without objecting, but on her way homewards she nodded assent when her father said: 

“Let things go on now as they may, but a few hours before the performance begins, I will send them word that you are ill.”

The selection of Arsinoe had however, on the other hand, given pleasure as well as pain.  Up in the middle places in the amphitheatre sat Keraunus, his legs far apart, his face glowing, panting and choking with sheer delight, and too haughty to draw in his feet even when the brother of the archidikastes tried to squeeze by his bulky person which filled two seats at once.  Arsinoe, whose sharp ears had not failed to catch the dealer’s remonstrances, and the words in which brave Pollux had taken her part, had, at first, felt dying of shame and terror, but now she felt as though she could fly on the wings of her delight.  She had never been so happy in her life, and when she got out with her father, in the first dark street she threw her arms round his neck, kissed both his cheeks, and then told him how kind the lady Julia, the prefect’s wife had been to her, and that she had undertaken, with the warmest friendliness, to have her costly dress made for her.

Keraunus had no objection to offer, and, strange to say, he did not consider it beneath his dignity to allow Arsinoe to be supplied with jewels by the wealthy manufacturer.