Now it was he who kept up the conversation with the stranger. The wife sat silent and observed with surprise the change which had come over the old woman. Since the stranger arrived, she had not spoken a word. She had lost her mild and friendly expression. She had pushed her food aside, and sat erect and rigid against the door-post, and stared straight ahead, with a severe and stony countenance. “It was the Emperor’s intention that she should have a happy life,” said the stranger. “But, despite all his kindly acts, she too has deserted him.” The old woman gave a start at these words, but the young one laid her hand quietingly on her arm. Then she began to speak in her soft, sympathetic voice. “I can not believe that Faustina has been as happy at court as you say,” she said, as she turned toward the stranger. “I am sure that she has loved Tiberius as if he had been her own son. I can understand how proud she has been of his noble youth, and I can even understand how it must have grieved her to see him abandon himself in his old age to suspicion and cruelty. She has certainly warned and admonished him every day. It has been terrible for her always to plead in vain. At last she could no longer bear to see him sink lower and lower.” The stranger, astonished, leaned forward a bit when he heard this; but the young woman did not glance up at him. She kept her eyes lowered, and spoke very calmly and gently. “Perhaps you are right in what you say of the old woman,” he replied. “Faustina has really not been happy at court. It seems strange, nevertheless, that she has left the Emperor in his old age, when she had endured him the span of a lifetime.” “What say you?” asked the husband. “Has old Faustina left the Emperor?” “She has stolen away from Capri without any one’s knowledge,” said the stranger. “She left just as poor as she came. She has not taken one of her treasures with her.” “And doesn’t the Emperor really know where she has gone?” asked the wife. “No! No one knows for certain what road the old woman has taken. Still, one takes it for granted that she has sought refuge among her native mountains.” “And the Emperor does not know, either, why she has gone away?” asked the young woman. “No, the Emperor knows nothing of this. He can not believe she left him because he once told her that she served him for money and gifts only, like all the rest. She knows, however, that he has never doubted her unselfishness. He has hoped all along that she would return to him voluntarily, for no one knows better than she that he is absolutely without friends.”