When in a few months it was deemed safe for Baithene to return to the Aventine with the dog and Fabricius, the company of slaves who came with them had become eager to render him willing service, knowing that he would demand nothing but what was right, and that he would give all that was possible; they had also become responsive to his gay words and smile, knowing that he had not only that light-heartedness which took troubles lightly, but also the faculty of flashing into lightnings of indignation against injustice and wrong. He found his sister also, in her place, the depositary of the joys and sorrows of the household, old and young; both of them having conquered the hearts around them by their old princely way of considering what every one needed and liked, and by their new Christian way of ruling, not by dividing but by uniting, of reigning by serving. The return of Fabricius and Baithene brought Ethne and the whole family more into the outer world. The life of Damaris, loving and natural as it was, had become essentially a life of religion; her pleasures were in her works of mercy, visiting the sick, helping the destitute, lifting up the fallen—services in which Ethne delighted to share. “The world,” in the Rome of those days, was for the most part so undeniably wicked and unlovely, its amusements so ugly, its vices so putrefying, that to come out of it seemed not merely the only safe, but the only cheerful and tolerable road to take. And to Lucia and Ethne, the mere gaiety of their youth, the beauty of flowers, the mere joy of living, singing like birds, dancing like young fawns, especially now that they danced and sang and lived together, were quite pleasure enough. But when Fabricius came there had to be entertainments, visits, attentions to and from the great houses connected with them; and this necessarily made the position of the Irish captives more complicated and difficult. It was a great joy to the brother and sister to be together again; and the rapture of Bran (the dog) at finding his young mistress again as he crouched at her feet, and bounded round her, and gravely placed his great paws on her shoulder, expressing his feelings with every possible movement of tail and ears, and every possible variety of bark, and cry, and whine, quite raised him out of the category of dumb beasts.