Cleomenes arranged that the girl should be sent to a villa, owned by the relatives of his late wife, some distance up the Nile.

Artemisia would thus be parted from Agias, but she would be quite safe; and to secure that, any sacrifice of stolen looks and pretty coquetry was cheerfully accepted.
Soon after this unpleasant little discovery, a far more serious event occurred.

Pothinus the eunuch, Achillas, the Egyptian commander of the army, and Theodotus, a "rhetoric teacher," whose real business was to spin, not words, but court intrigues, had plotted together to place the young King Ptolemaeus in sole power.

The conspiracy ran its course.
There was a rising of the "Macedonian"[180] guard at the palace, a gathering of citizens in the squares of the capital, culminating in bloody riots and proclamations declaring the king vested with the only supreme power.

Hot on the heels of this announcement it was bruited around the city that Cleopatra had escaped safely to Palestine, where, in due time, she would doubtless be collecting an army at the courts of Hyrcanus, the Jewish prince, and other Syrian potentates, to return and retake the crown.
[180] Macedonian it is needless to say was a mere name.