It might have been from mere womanish caprice, from a desire of probing the depth of her lover’s feelings, from curiosity to learn and look upon the conduct of a baffled conqueror; or more likely yet from jealousy—jealousy that his love of honor and empire should interfere with his devotion to her beauty, that she had so fatally betrayed him. She might have overlooked, in the moment of action, the consequences of her flight—she might have fancied the victory gained, and her desertion a matter of no moment—a desertion that would wring the heart, without affecting the cause, of him whom she adored the most, when she most trifled with his peace of mind. She might have fancied the defeat, should defeat ensue, not irreparable—the empire lost to-day recoverable on the morrow—she might have hoped so to teach the proud triumvir by this reverse, that, when the government of the world should be conquered by their joint forces, the world were the gift of Cleopatra. It might have been one of these motives singly; it might have been the result of all united—felt, perhaps, but not analyzed even by herself, that had spurred her on till retreat was impossible and hope desperate. Still it was love that caused her to betray him, as it was love that caused her to proclaim herself dead already, ere she had yet thought of dying, in order to mollify his indignation and awaken his sympathies; as it was love that now led her to curse the day when she was born, born to be the fate of Antony. Her beautiful bosom was exposed to the light, which lingered in a pencil of mellowed lustre, upon its soft, yet sculptured loveliness. The delicate veil of fine muslin which should have veiled those secret beauties, had been violently rent asunder, and hung down in natural folds below her jeweled cincture. On each of her voluptuous bosoms, which hardly heaved under the influence of the chill despair which had frozen up the very sources of her grief, there was a small gout of gore, a speck such as covers the orifice of the smallest punctured wound; but beyond those tiny witnesses there was no stain upon her snow-white kerchief, no trace as of blood which had flowed freely and been wiped away. Her hands were folded in her lap, the fingers unconsciously playing with a chain of mingled strands of golden thread and dark, auburn hair. Her face was very pale, and cold, and almost stern in its passionless rigidity—the eye was cast downward, immovably riveted on the countenance of the mighty dead; but, from the long, dark lashes there hung no tear. All was composed, silent, self-restrained grief. An occasional shudder crept, as it were, electrically through her whole frame, and now and then her lips moved, as though she were communing with some viewless form; but beyond this there was no motion or no sound.