Page 79 (1/1)
"Hush!" said the girl softly, stretching her slender neck toward the illu upon the pedestal, and Chrysilla, Daphne's coreeable to you, beautiful Althea, show us Nike crowning the victor"
Even the Biamite's keen ear could not catch the reply and the purport of the rapid conversation which followed; but she guessed the point in question when the young men ere present rose hastily, rushed toward the pedestal, loosed the wreaths froirl whom Chrysilla had just called "beautiful Althea"
Four Hellenic officers in the strong military force under Philippus, the coypt," as Pelusiueneral to visit his friend Archias's daughter at Tennis; but Althea rejected their garlands with an explanation which seemed to satisfy them
Ledscha could not hear what she said, but when only Hermon and Myrtilus still stood with their wreaths of flowers opposite the "beautiful Althea," and she glanced hesitatingly from one to the other, as if she found the choice difficult, and then drew fro, the Bia which Heran to throb faster, and, with the keen prenised in Althea her rival and foe
Now there was no doubt of it; now, as the actress, skilled in every wile, hid the hand holding the ring, as well as the other ee so that she could use the garland which Her was instantly fulfilled, for when Althea held out her little tightly clinched fist to the artists and asked Myrtilus to choose, the hand to which he pointed and she then opened was e, which she displayed ell-feigned regret to the spectators
Then Hermon knelt before her, and, as he offered Althea his wreath, his dark eyes gazed so ardently into the blue ones of the red-haired Greek-like Queen Arsinoe, she was of Thracian descent--that Ledscha was now positively certain she knew for whose sake her lover had so basely betrayed her
How she hated this bold woman!
Yet she was forced to keep quiet, and pressed her lips tightly together as Althea seized the white sheet and with marvellous celerity wound it about her until it fell in exquisite folds like a long robe