The house of Nymphidius was surrounded by soldiers, who refused admittance to Adonijah; the promise of a donative in the name of Julius Claudius, and a few coins thrown among them as an earnest, induced them to give the party admission. What a scene of desolation presented itself to his view! The valuable movables defaced and removed—torn raiment—pavements that were stained with the marks of recent debauchery and recent slaughter. In Lucia’s apartment a scattered lock of sun-bright hair, and some vellum scrolls deeply stained with blood, told a tale of terrible import; a dagger still red with slaughter lay near. The victim was gone, but these evidences revealed her fate. He caught up the dagger, determined to sheathe it to the hilt in the bosom of the murderer of Lucia. Without a tear he gathered up the relic of the woman he had loved, enveloped it in the parchments, and put it in his bosom. Rushing forth he demanded in a fierce voice, “What had become of the wife of Nymphidius?” She had not been seen, she was doubtless dead; but all denied having been actors in that horrid deed. He showed the dagger, and it was recognised as having been worn by Marcus, the freedman of Nymphidius, who was dying of his wounds in an adjoining apartment. Thither Adonijah repaired to learn the fatal truth. The film of death had gathered over the eyes of the expiring man; the centurion thought he would never speak again. Regardless of the pain he was inflicting, Adonijah thundered out the name of “Lucia Claudia;” he would have demanded the particulars of her murder, but memory at this agitating instant failed him, and he relapsed into his native tongue, unable to form a sentence in the Latin language, familiar as it was now become. The centurion guessed what he would ask, and the dying man replied to his questions in the slow laboured accents of death: “When my master was quitting his house for the last time, he called me to him and said, ‘Marcus, if no message comes from me in the course of an hour, slay my wife without delay,’ I stared and thought he had lost his senses, but he sternly repeated his words, adding, ‘If you neither hear from nor see me in that time, do as I bid you, or your life shall answer for your disobedience; remember, it is Nymphidius Sabinus who now governs Rome.’ This I knew to be true; but I was sorry for the lady. I knew not his reasons then, but I know them now; he was determined that she of whom he was so infinitely fond should not survive him if he fell.” The dying man gasped as if in mortal pain. “Proceed, if you can, and briefly too,” remarked the centurion.