With a mind dazed and only half‐conscious through suffering, Neæra was thankful for the encouraging words of this personage, whom she surmised to be some one of high position. When she fell back to where the group of attendants were standing, one of them whispered to her that it was the Prefect who had spoken to her. A great load fell from her thankful heart at the words. She gazed back with something like awe at the most feared and powerful man at that moment in the empire. From Martialis she had learned much, from time to time, concerning him; and the assurance, coming from the mighty personage’s own lips, changed at once her agony into hope. Another sorrow haunted her with an intensity of suspense. Her father—where was he? Was he sick or dying as she had been told? A mysterious dread of ill weighed upon her. The details of her own rough and forcible abduction could not fail but impress her mind with a sense of some evil‐doing, so, at the first opportunity, she began her efforts to obtain information respecting the potter. Those whom she asked either denied all knowledge of him or gave evasive answers. In one or two cases, her strong suspicions were aroused that actual knowledge was not wanting, by the hesitating manner in which a negative answer was made. More than ever alarmed by the confused and embarrassed manner of those who seemed to falter before her earnest gaze, her acute anxiety at length emboldened her to speak to Livia herself. The lady received the application condescendingly, and promised that inquiries should be made at the palace. Later on the same day she summoned Neæra and made known to her the fact of the potter’s death. He had been taken ill with a sudden and strange sickness, and had only lived a few hours afterward. Such were the fatal words which fell on the stricken girl’s ears, and, after the first gust of wild grief had passed away, a brooding melancholy possessed her. Her lover was a close prisoner, whose fate hung on the whim of Caesar. The gentle, simple‐minded, sweet‐ natured potter, whom she had filially loved and revered with all the strength of her nature, being also reft from her, no wonder the burden of her sorrow sapped the beauty swiftly from her face, leaving hollow eyes and thin cheeks. She knew that Martialis had been removed to the villa Neptune, and, by the last report, was still there, so, when she received intimation to accompany Livia thither, her heart bounded and her eyes brightened. The journey itself, and the melancholy satisfaction that at each step she was nigher to her lover, did something to restore more colour to her cheek and vivacity to her manner. But what was her unutterable delight, when no other than Zeno, the steward, appeared before her, not long after her arrival, and led her away into a room where she saw Tibia waiting alone to receive her. With an indescribable cry of thankfulness and relief she sprang forward, and the two women were locked in each other’s fast embrace.