A loud knocking at the outer door of the house awoke her. She could scarcely realise that her eyes had closed at all, and sat up to listen. The narrow little window, near the ceiling, was faintly luminous with the struggling light of very early day, and, though the wind was still high, it had palpably moderated. She could hear the loud, regular snore of Tucca within, as yet undisturbed by the early caller, whoever it might be; and it was not until the pounding of the door had been repeated thrice, that the slumberer’s voice was heard demanding the name and business of the visitor. Plautia’s suspicions were keenly excited, and she rose from her pallet and placed her ear to the crevice of the door. ‘Who is it, and what do you want at this time?’ asked Tucca. ‘Open the confounded door and see!’ was shouted in reply. ‘Is it you, noble Zeno?’ ‘It is, noble Tucca.’ The bar of the door was undone, and Tucca said, ‘I thought it was your voice, good Zeno—come in, but don’t speak so loud lest you waken——’ Plautia could hear no more, but she easily supplied the remainder of the speech. ‘It is just what I came to do,’ returned the other; ‘I am grieved to do it at such an unseasonable hour, on such an unseasonable morning, as well for my own sake as hers, but I have no option. Go, knock her up, and tell her who waits to speak with her. While you are doing that I will keep the cold out with a drink of your best, Tucca.’ Plautia heard the old man remove the trap‐door, which covered the steps descending to his cellar, and upon his return he came and tapped at her door. ‘Well!’ she asked. ‘So please you, noble lady, I am loth to disturb you, but I am bidden to it by Zeno, Caesar’s steward, who has come to have speech with you, and waits even now.’ These words caused her an involuntary thrill. Martialis was right, and she felt that she had been betrayed. Her suspicions were confined to a very narrow range, and the angry flash of her eyes, and clenching of her hand upon her bosom, were eloquent indications which boded ill for Tigellinus. Her native dauntlessness impelled her instinctively to adopt a bold, unshrinking policy. A woman of weaker nature would probably have been tossed and whirled hither and thither amid the eddies of shuffling timidity, and finally stranded on the doomed reef of hysterical stubbornness; but Plautia’s high spirit rose with danger. The recklessness of unhappiness and despairing thoughts, moreover, is a stimulant which is apt to outrun calm fearlessness into temerity and bravado. ‘Tell Zeno, Caesar’s steward, to come again at a more fitting time of day,’ she said loudly and peremptorily. The Greek heard, and, approaching the door of her apartment, answered for himself in the softest and most persuasive of his tones.