heart had shed tears of blood over the infamous mother whom her father
had execrated. And Queen Tryphoena, whom history recorded as a monster,
had not killed her husband, but merely thrust him from the throne.

Arsinoe's execrations of her mother and sister came back to her memory,
and the thought that the rosy lips of the twins and her darling Alexander
could ever open to curse her,--the idea that the children would ever
raise their beloved hands to point at her, the wicked murderess of their
father, with horror and scorn--No, no, and again no! She would not
purchase a few more years of valueless life at the cost of this
humiliation and shame.

Purchase of whom?

Of that Octavianus who had robbed her son of the heritage of his father,
Caesar, and whose mention in the will was like an imputation on her
fidelity--the cold-hearted, calculating upstart, whose nature from their
first meeting in Rome had repelled, rebuffed, chilled her; of the man by
whose cajolery and power her husband--for in her own eyes and those of
the Egyptians Antony held this position--had been induced to wed his
sister, Octavia, and thereby stamp her, Cleopatra, as merely his love,
cast a doubt upon the legitimate birth of her children; of the false
friend of the trusting Antony who, before the battle of Actium, had most
deeply humiliated and insulted both!

On the contrary, her royal pride rebelled against obeying the command of
such a man to commit the most atrocious deed; and from childhood this
pride had been as much a part of her nature as her breath and the
pulsation of her heart. And yet, for her children's sake, she might
perhaps have incurred this disgrace, had it not been at the same time the