deep, was not wholly undisturbed. Fearful images crossed her fancy. She started and sobbed, and cried, “Save, O save and spare him—Flavius, my dear Flavius!”—and her breathing again became free, and her lips sunk once more into repose. But fearful was the change, from a saddened tenderness to agony and despair, which passed over the features of Cœlius as he listened to her cry. Suddenly, striking his clenched hands against his forehead, he shook them terribly at the sleeping woman, and rushed wildly out of the apartment. CHAPTER V. _Progress to the Sepulchre._ It was noon of the same day—a warm and sunny noon, in which the birds and the breeze equally counseled pleasure and repose. The viands stood before our Cœlius and his wife, the choicest fruits of Italy, and cates which might not, in later days, have misbeseemed the favorite chambers of Lucullus. The goblet was lifted in the hands of both, and the heart of Aurelia felt almost as cheerful as the expression on her face. It was the reflection in the face of her husband. His brow was gloomy no longer. The tones of his voice were neither cold, nor angry, nor desponding. A change—she knew not why—had come over his spirit, and he smiled, nay, laughed out, in the very exultation of a new life. Aurelia conjectured nothing of this so sudden change. Enough that it was grateful to her soul. She was too happy in its influence to inquire into its cause. What heart that is happy does inquire? She quaffed the goblet at his bidding—quaffed it to the dregs—and her eye gleamed delighted and delightfully upon his, even as in the first hours of their union. She had no apprehensions—dreaded nothing sinister—and did not perceive that ever, at the close of his laughter, there was a convulsive quiver—a sort of hysterical sobbing, that he seemed to try to subdue in vain. She noticed not this, nor the glittering, almost spectral brightness of his glance, as, laughing tumultuously, he still kept his gaze intently fixed upon her. She was blind to all things but the grateful signs of his returning happiness and attachment. Once more the goblet was lifted. “To Turmes (Mercury) the conductor,” cried the husband. The wife drank unwittingly—for still her companion smiled upon her, and spoke joyfully, and she was as little able as willing to perceive that any thing occult occured in his expression. “Have you drank?” he asked. She smiled, and laid the empty goblet before him. “Come, then, you shall now behold the picture. You will now be prepared to understand it.”