But Casca was anxious to return to Alexandria, where now he had made his home. Rome had lost its charm for him; there were few left to sympathise with him in his learned researches, and the great Museum of Alexandria, with its inexhaustible treasury of literature and art, had no rival in Rome. To linger about the place where Hyacintha had lived, to recall her in all the long years of faithful and pure devotion which he had lavished upon her--this was the comfort of Claudius’s heart, but, naturally, with Casca it was wholly different. He had loved her as a brother, and had retained his affection for her in the long years of separation, thinking tenderly of her as his little sister in the old home at Verulam, when she cheered him in the struggles which his early boyhood had known, in the consciousness of physical weakness, and the inward conviction that he had the mental power which, if it were but allowed scope, would stand him in far better stead than the sword and the battle-axe. But he had made new ties, and gathered round him the joys of home. While his young wife lived he had been happy in the present; and the past, which was all to his friend Claudius, was to him like a pleasant but fading dream. Then, when his wife was taken from him, his pride and joy centred in his child, who seemed, even at this early age, to inherit the beauty and graces of her aunt in no scant measure. It is always hard to those who are growing old to feel that while others of their friends and contemporaries have gathered round them interests and the sweet ties of home-life, they are standing, like the last of some old forest trees, companionless and alone. Claudius had been a brave soldier, and was considered a distinguished officer, who had earned his laurels on many a bloodstained field. But his brethren in arms, who gave themselves up, on their retirement from active service, to all the luxuries and often license of Roman society, found him but a dull and speechless companion. Gradually Claudius withdrew more and more from public life; and now what had been the one great interest of his daily routine at Rome was over! To watch the Vestal Maxima at a distance, to divine her every look and gesture, to be present at all public ceremonials where she was to be seen, to be the presiding genius of her life, though never to approach her or give her cause for uneasiness--this had been Claudius’s mission. He had heard of the evil rumours which Cœlia had tried to sow broadcast; he had watched the once stately step growing more feeble, the deep earnest eyes lose their intense glow, the beautifully-chiselled features grow more pinched and wan, and his heart had sunk within him.