No one, not even Cleopatra, could dispense with a protecting wrap in this cold draught, and nothing suited her better than the purple mantle in whose delicate woollen fabric black and gold dragons and griffins were embroidered.

Iras had taken care that it lay ready.

Barine could not fail to appear like a beggar in comparison, though Alexas said that her blue kerchief was marvellously becoming.
He was a base-minded voluptuary, who, aided by rich gifts of mind and wide knowledge, had shunned no means of ingratiating himself with Antony, the most lavish of patrons.

The repulse which this man, accustomed to success, had received from Barine had been hard to forget, yet he did not resign the hope of winning her.

Never had she seemed more desirable than in her touching weakness.