That gleam of malicious triumph which had so brightened up the face of the slave, had come and gone like the lightning flash, and, for the moment, AEnone was almost inclined to believe that it was some bewildering waking dream. But her instinct told her that it was no mere imagination or fancy which could thus, at one instant, fill the heart with dread and change her bright anticipations of coming joy into a dull, aching foreboding of misery. It was rather her inner nature warning her not to be too easily ensnared, but to wait for coming evil with unfaltering watchfulness, and, for the purpose of baffling enmity, to perform the hardest task that can be imposed upon a guileless nature--that of repressing all outward sign of distrust, hiding the torture of the heart within, and meeting smile with smile. But day after day passed on, and even to her watchful and strained attention there appeared no further sign of anything that could excite alarm. From morning until night there rested upon the face of the young Greek slave no expression other than that of tender, faithful, and pleased obedience. At the morning toilet, at the forenoon task of embroidery, or at the afternoon promenade, there was ever the same serene gaze of earnest devotion, and the same delighted alacrity to anticipate the slightest wish. Until at last AEnone began again to think that perhaps her perception of that one fleeting look might, after all, be but a flickering dream. And when, at times, she sat and heard the young girl speak, not with apparent method, but rather as one who is unwittingly drawn into discursive prattle, about her cottage home in Samos, and the lowly lover from whom the invading armies had torn her, and watched the moistened eye and the trembling lip with which these memories were dwelt upon, an inward pity and sympathy tempted her to forget her own distrust; until one day she was impelled to act as she had once desired, and began to pour out her whole heart to the young slave as to a friend. The words seemed of themselves to flow to her lips, as, bidding the girl be comforted, she told, in one short sentence, how she too had once lived in a tranquil cottage home, away from the bustle and fever of that imperial Rome, and had had her lover of low degree, and that both were still innocently dear to her.