The bearer of the gift was the goddess of love, and the ornament she gave--so ran the legend--brought misfortune on those who inherited it.

All the darkest hours of her life revived in her memory, and the blackest of them all had come upon her as the outcome of Aphrodite's gifts.

She thought with a shudder of the murdered Roman, and remembered the moment when Eulaeus had told her that her Bithynian lover had been killed by wild beasts.
She rushed from one door to another--the victim of the avenging Eumenides--shrieked from the window for rescue and help, and in that one hour lived through a whole year of agonies and terrors.
At last--at last, the door of the room was opened, and Euergetes came towards her, clad in the purple, with the crown of the two countries on his grand head, radiant with triumph and delight.
"All hail to you, sister!" he exclaimed in a cheerful tone, and lifting the heavy crown from his curling hair.

"You ought to be proud to-day, for your own brother has risen to high estate, and is now King of Upper and Lower Egypt." Cleopatra turned from him, but he followed her and tried to take her hand.

She however snatched it away, exclaiming: "Fill up the measure of your deeds, and insult the woman whom you have robbed and made a widow.