"Oh, Caia!" I cried. She bridled and stared at me haughtily. "'Vedia,'" if you please, she said coldly. "You have no manner of right to 'Caia' me, Andivius." The distant formality of her address, her disdainful tone, the affront of her words, chilled me like a dash of cold water. "Caia!" I stammered, "Vedia, I mean. What has happened? What is wrong?" For I could not credit that she would be incensed with me because of my involvement in the affray in Vediamnum nor that she would condemn me unheard, especially as Tanno had told me, in the Stadium of the Palace, that he had taken care to call on Vedia, and give her his version of my mishap. She glowered at me. "Your effrontery," she burst out, "amazes me. I am incredulous that I really see you in my home, that you really have the shamelessness to force yourself into my presence! It is an unforgivable affront that you should pretend love for me and aspire to be my husband and all the while be philandering after a freedwoman; but that you should parade yourself on the high road with her all the way from your villa to Rome, with the hussy enthroned in your own travelling carriage, is far worse. That you should get involved in roadside brawls with competitors for the possession of the minx is worse yet. Worst of all that you should advertise by all these doings, to all our world, your infatuation for such a creature and your greater interest in her than in me. I am indignant that I have considered marrying a suitor capable of such vileness, of such fatuity, of such folly." I was like a sailboat taken all aback by a sudden change of wind. I could not believe my ears. "I never took the slightest interest in Marcia," I protested, "except to keep my uncle from marrying her, after he set her free. She made eyes at me also, of course, for she made eyes at every marriageable man within reach. But I never had anything to do with her, never called on her by myself, never so much as talked to her alone. I went to her dinners, of course. All widowers and bachelors of our district went to her dinners. But her dinners were the pattern of propriety in every way. Your own grandmother's famous dinners were not more decorous. Except for being a guest, with others, at her dinners, I never was at her villa. I lent my carriage not to her but to her bridegroom, Marcus Martius, a prosperous gentleman of my neighborhood, of whom you have often heard me speak, a friend of my uncle's and a friend of mine since boyhood. The fights, as Tanno explained to you, had nothing to do with Marcia and her involvement in them was as accidental as mine." Vedia did not look a particle mollified.