As the last word left his lips he contrived to retreat, and summarily close the conference by shutting the door upon it, yet so dexterously as to leave no impression of unseemly haste. Plautia sprang after him, but her devoted slave seized her skirts and besought her to be prudent. ‘Fool!’ cried her mistress in a fury, flashing out at the same time a superb oath and a blow. Her retainer started back in affright, and Plautia rushed out into the peristyle. Not a sight or a sound of a living being were distinguishable. She flew along what seemed to be the Emperor’s most likely line of retreat, and boldly called upon him in loud tones. But nothing answered save the short echo of her own voice: the place seemed deserted. Passage ran out of passage in bewildering intricacy. Again she stopped and called, and again the echoes sank around her into dead silence, as she stood with her senses strained to their utmost. Was the palace really inhabited? If so, what part? She pressed on again, keeping to what she assumed was the main corridor. Suddenly her course was stopped by a door. In the dim light she sought in vain for a handle or latch, or anything which might cause the door to yield. Nothing but a smooth hard surface met her touch, wherever it strayed: there was not even a keyhole. Wasting no time, therefore, she instantly turned back. On either hand she had passed the entrances of room after room. She darted in and out, exploring them with wonderful energy. She was fully roused, but more with passion than sense of danger. Her explorations, however, availed her nothing. Some of the apartments were furnished, and more were just as the workmen’s hands had left them. All alike were uninhabited. Forming another resolution, she relinquished this task, in order to make her way back to her own apartments. The time to be consumed in this, however, was a matter dependent on chance, since her movements had become merely at random. With nothing to guide her she hastened along, doubling on her track now and again when she considered herself to be wrong, or when her flying steps led her into a _cul‐de‐sac_. At last she struck the right path, and finally ran out into the peristyle of her own rooms, very much relieved in mind and temper, and scant of breath. She found she had made a circuit of the maze. Nearly opposite, her slave was standing by the open door, where she had been left in the agonies of doubt and fear. ‘’Tis nothing but a maze of empty passages and rooms,’ exclaimed her mistress, bursting on her savagely. ‘Where the people dwell, I know not—nor where the old dotard has disappeared to. I had caught him if you had not held me, fool. Come, let us see if we cannot find the outer door through which we entered, and so let us begone; it was nigh at hand somewhere.’