were fellow-conspirators against her husband's throne and life. The
ladies whom Proclus had invited were all confidants of Arsinoe, the wives
and daughters of his other guests. All were members of the highest class
of society, and their manners showed the entire freedom from restraint
that existed in the Queen's immediate circle. Althea profited by the
advantage of being Hermon's only acquaintance here. So, when he took his
place on the cushion at her side, she greeted him familiarly and
cordially, as she had treated him for a long time, wherever they met,
and in a low voice told him, sometimes in a kindly tone, sometimes with
biting sarcasm, the names and characters of the other guests.

The most aristocratic was Amyntas, who stood highest of all in the
Queen's favour because he had good reason to hate the other Arsinoe, the
sister of the King. His son had been this royal dame's first husband,
and she had deserted him to marry Lysimachus, the aged King of Thrace.

The Rhodian Chrysippus, her leech and trusted counsellor, also possessed
great influence over the Queen.

"The noble lady," whispered Althea, "needs the faithful devotion of every
well-disposed subject, for perhaps you have already learned how cruelly
the King embitters the life of the mother of his three children. Many a
caprice can be forgiven the suffering Ptolemy, who recently expressed a
wish that he could change places with the common workmen whom he saw
eating their meal with a good appetite, and who is now tortured by the
gout; yet he watches the hapless woman with the jealousy of a tiger,
though he himself is openly faithless to her. What is the Queen to him,
since the widow of Lysimachus returned from Thrace--no, from Cassandrea,
Ephesus, and sacred Samothrace, or whatever other places there are which
would no longer tolerate the murderess?"