Agrippina was in a ferment of alarm. She could scarcely believe her ears. That ready lie about the epilepsy! She knew--and many of the guests knew--that Britannicus was a fine strong lad, who had never had an epileptic attack in his life. One thing only could have happened. Britannicus, in whom rested the last hopes of her vengeance and her ambition, must have been poisoned by his brother. Infernal gods! was it possible? Could this have been the deed of that youth whom it seemed but yesterday that she had clasped to her bosom as a lovely, rosy, smiling child? Panic, consternation seized her. ‘How long,’ she thought, ‘will he abstain from the prophesied murder of me, his mother?’ She panted; she shuddered in every limb; she required all her efforts not to faint; she grew white and red by turns, and those who were watching her saw the cup of wine which she seized shake so violently in her trembling hand that she spilled half its contents over her bosom. ‘She, at least, is as innocent of this as Octavia herself,’ whispered Seneca to Burrus. ‘But, oh! horror! where will these things end?’ Octavia looked as though she had been turned to marble. She spoke no word; she made no sign. Agrippina had tried in vain to prevent her speaking countenance from betraying the violence of her emotions; but Octavia, young as she still was, and little more than a child, had been taught from her earliest years to hide her emotions under a mask of impassibility; and, indeed, the blow which had thus fallen upon her was beyond her power to realise. The awful grief struck her dumb. One shrinking motion, one stifled scream, and she reclined there as though she were dead--as pale and as motionless, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, conscious of nothing, her white cheek looking all the more ghastly from the crimson roses which circled her dark tresses and fell twining over her fair neck. But how should the mirth of the banquet be resumed? The stereotyped smile on the features of Seneca looked like a grin of anguish. The brow of Pætus Thrasea was dark as a thunder-cloud. Clemens and several of the prince’s boyish friends were weeping audibly and uncontrollably, while Titus, already feeling ill as well as terrified, was sobbing with his head on the table. Nero himself in vain attempted a fitful hilarity, which could wake no echo among guests of whom many-- ‘Like the Ithacensian suitors of old time, Stared with great eyes, and laughed with alien lips, And knew not what they meant.’ So dense a cloud fell over their minds that it was a relief to all when, without waiting for the termination of the banquet, Nero dismissed his guests, availing himself of the excuse that the comitial disease had always been regarded as an evil omen, and that, though he hoped his brother’s attack would prove but slight, he saw how deeply it had affected the spirits of his friends. They had come to that superb feast in pride and gaiety; they hurried home in horror and alarm.