For himself he put on a very full and flowing crimson evening dress, as if he were proceeding to a dinner-party; he piled a dozen odd rings upon his fingers, and laughingly asked Semiramis to arrange his hair for him in the most fashionable style, and anoint it heavily with Valeria's most pungent perfumes.

At the same time, Arsinoe was quite transforming Artemisia.

Valeria's cosmetic vials were for once put into play for a purpose, and when Artemisia reappeared from the dressing-room after her treatment, Agias saw before him no longer a fair-skinned little Greek, but a small, slender, but certainly very handsome Egyptian serving-lad, with bronzed skin, conspicuous carmine lips, and features that Arsinoe's paint and pencils had coarsened and exaggerated.
Fortunately, the classic costume both for men and women was so essentially alike, that Artemisia did not have to undergo that mortification from a change of clothes which might have befallen one at the present day in a like predicament.

Her not very long black hair was loose, and shaken over her shoulders.

Agias had brought for her a short, variegated _lacerna_[132] which answered well enough as the habit of a boy-valet who was on good terms with his master.
[132] A sort of mantle held on the shoulders by a clasp.
"_Eho!_" cried Agias, when he had witnessed the transformation, "we must hasten or Valeria will be anxious to keep you as her serving-boy! Ah, I forgot she is going with her dear Pratinas to Egypt.