for Nefert's hand, but would nave been refused if the king himself had
not supported the suit of his favorite officer. After the wedding, she
retired with Nefert to Mena's house, and undertook, while he was at the
war, to manage his great estates, which however had been greatly
burthened with debt by his father.

Fate put the means into her hands of indemnifying herself and her
children for many past privations, and she availed herself of them to
gratify her innate desire to be esteemed and admired; to obtain admission
for her son, splendidly equipped, into a company of chariot-warriors of
the highest class; and to surround her daughter with princely
magnificence.

When the Regent, who had been a friend of her late husband, removed into
the palace of the Pharaohs, he made her advances, and the clever and
decided woman knew how to make herself at first agreeable, and finally
indispensable, to the vacillating man.

She availed herself of the circumstance that she, as well as he, was
descended from the old royal house to pique his ambition, and to open to
him a view, which even to think of, he would have considered forbidden as
a crime, before he became intimate with her.

Ani's suit for the hand of the princess Bent-Anat was Katuti's work. She
hoped that the Pharoah would refuse, and personally offend the Regent,
and so make him more inclined to tread the dangerous road which she was
endeavoring to smooth for him. The dwarf Nemu was her pliant tool.

She had not initiated him into her projects by any words; he however gave
utterance to every impulse of her mind in free language, which was