The Emperor waved his hand. There was only time for one agonising look between the lovers, and the Pretorians hurried their prisoner from the room. CHAPTER XXIV. It would have greatly relieved the distracted mind of Martialis, had he known that he occupied the Emperor’s thoughts to a far greater degree than his beloved Neæra. The brilliant beauty and wit of Plautia was too far in the ascendant, at present, in the Imperial heart to admit of a rival, especially one of such a different type. To Neæra, when she had been dismissed to safe keeping, Tiberius gave, for the time, no further heed. Weightier matters engaged him, and very shortly after the conclusion of the scene described in the last chapter, he rose from the supper‐table and returned to his own apartment, from which he dismissed every one. Suspicion and dissimulation equipoised the Imperial mind. The former fed the latter, and both were unutterably profound. Only the day before he had yielded to the importunities of the Prefect, and had consented to give him his daughter‐in‐law in marriage. Sejanus retired in joy, with everything arranged for his early reception into the Imperial family. His plans, long and carefully followed up, were now well‐nigh matured, and he laughed in his sleeve at the earnest, trustful affection which the Emperor had displayed very liberally toward him. He was not aware of the fact that he daily and hourly filled the buried thoughts of the old man—thoughts which trusted nobody; that his own eager ambition was blinding him, and actually supplying a fatal web for a subtler mind than his own to weave around him.