At this moment Smith’s interest in that queer conversation died away, for of a sudden he beheld none other than the queen of his dreams, Ma-Mee. Oh! there she stood, without a doubt, only ten times more beautiful than he had ever pictured her. She was tall and somewhat fair-complexioned, with slumbrous, dark eyes, and on her face gleamed the mystic smile he loved. She wore a robe of simple white and a purple-broidered apron, a crown of golden _uraei_ with turquoise eyes was set upon her dark hair as in her statue, and on her breast and arms were the very necklace and bracelets that he had taken from her tomb. She appeared to be somewhat moody, or rather thoughtful, for she leaned by herself against a balustrade, watching the throng without much interest. Presently a Pharaoh, a black-browed, vigorous man with thick lips, drew near. “I greet your Majesty,” he said. She started, and answered: “Oh, it is you! I make my obeisance to your Majesty,” and she curtsied to him, humbly enough, but with a suggestion of mockery in her movements. “Well, you do not seem to have been very anxious to find me, Ma-Mee, which, considering that we meet so seldom——” “I saw that your Majesty was engaged with my sister queens,” she interrupted, in a rich, low voice, “and with some other ladies in the gallery there, whose faces I seem to remember, but who I think were _not_ queens. Unless, indeed, you married them after I was drawn away.” “One must talk to one’s relations,” replied the Pharaoh. “Quite so. But, you see, I have no relations—at least, none whom I know well. My parents, you will remember, died when I was young, leaving me Egypt’s heiress, and they are still vexed at the marriage which I made on the advice of my counsellors. But, is it not annoying? I have lost one of my rings, that which had the god Bes on it. Some dweller on the earth must be wearing it to-day, and that is why I cannot get it back from him.” “Him! Why ‘him’? Hush; the business is about to begin.” “What business, my lord?” “Oh, the question of the violation of our tombs, I believe.” “Indeed! That is a large subject, and not a very profitable one, I should say. Tell me, who is that?” And she pointed to a lady who had stepped forward, a very splendid person, magnificently arrayed. “Cleopatra the Greek,” he answered, “the last of Egypt’s Sovereigns, one of the Ptolemys. You can always know her by that Roman who walks about after her.” “Which?” asked Ma-Mee. “I see several—also other men. She was the wretch who rolled Egypt in the dirt and betrayed her. Oh, if it were not for the law of peace by which we must abide when we meet thus!” “You mean that she would be torn to shreds, Ma-Mee, and her very soul scattered like the limbs of Osiris? Well, if it were not for that law of peace, so perhaps would many of us, for never have I heard a single king among these hundreds speak altogether well of those who went before or followed after him.”