A dark suspicion that he had betrayed himself into the hands of a villain, who was then plotting some atrocious project connected with his safety or honour, began to rise on the senator's bewildered brain as he unwillingly submitted to the penetrating examination of the Pagan's glance. At that moment, however, the withered lips of the old man slowly parted, and he began to speak. Whether as he looked on Vetranio's disturbed countenance, and marked his unsteady gait, the heart of Ulpius, for the first time since his introduction to the senator, misgave him when he thought of their monstrous engagement; or whether the near approach of the moment that was henceforth, as he wildly imagined, to fix Vetranio as his assistant and ally, so powerfully affected his mind that it instinctively sought to vent its agitation through the natural medium of words, it is useless to inquire. Whatever his motives for speech, the impressive earnestness of his manner gave evidence of the depth and intensity of his emotions as he addressed the senator thus:-- 'I have submitted to servitude in a Christian's house, I have suffered the contamination of a Christian's prayers, to gain the use of your power and station when the time to employ them should arrive. The hour has now come when my part of the conditions of our engagement is to be performed; the hour will yet come when your part shall be exacted from you in turn! Do you wonder at what I have done and what I will do? Do you marvel that a household drudge should speak thus to a nobleman of Rome? Are you astonished that I risk so much as to venture on enlisting you--by the sacrifice of the girl who now slumbers above--in the cause whose end is the restoration of our fathers' gods, and in whose service I have suffered and grown old? Listen, and you shall hear from what I have fallen--you shall know what I once was!' 'I adjure you by all the gods and goddesses of our ancient worship, let me hear you where I can breathe--in the garden, on the housetop, anywhere but in this dungeon!' murmured the senator in entreating accents.