As I said, many other ladies of her rank had gone out that day to see the cruel sight, and to feast their eyes on a scene from which delicately nurtured women might have been supposed to turn with loathing. But Cæcilia, the wife of Severus, hated trouble, and looking on life as one long festival, disliked to think of anything which seemed to point to the probability, that to many it was a season of trial and suffering. So, lulled by the fountain in the atrium of her husband’s beautiful villa, she enjoyed a dreamy repose, and was unconscious of all that was passing about her, and that her little daughter had put aside the shells and also disappeared behind the curtain. Ebba was on the gallery that ran round the atrium, and when she saw Hyacintha pull aside the curtain she came to the head of the marble stairs, and beckoned to her. The child went up to her, saying-- “What is it you said, Ebba?” “Come hither and look from the gallery over the country, and you will see.” As she spoke, Ebba mounted still higher to the square opening in the roof, on one side of which was a small covered gallery, whence an extensive view was spread out, of the town and river and country beyond. The child gazed upon the view before her with wistful, questioning eyes. The throng of people spread over the fields, which were smiling in the June sunshine; and along the great Watling Street, and across the bridge, there was a continuous stream of all ages and sexes. The low murmur of the moving multitude reached the place where the Briton slave and her little mistress stood, and upon a hill rising on the opposite bank by the river there was an erection, round which the glittering helmets of soldiers were shining in the sun. Hyacintha drew closer to Ebba, and said, in a low tone-- “Tell me, Ebba, are they going to see the man killed? I wish you would speak, and,” she murmured, “tell me all you know.” “If I were to tell you that,” the young Briton said, “I should be seized and tortured; and I am not ready to confess my faith.” “Thy faith? Is not thy faith to believe that the gods are above, and watch over men; and that if men and women submit to their decrees they are protected and safe.” Ebba shook her head. “I know not if the Romans are safe under the care of their gods. I know they have enslaved us and are stern masters.” “Am I not kind to thee, Ebba?” said Hyacintha; “I would fain be kind; but of late thou hast been so strange and sad. Never can I win a laugh from thee. Never wilt thou play the harp for me to dance and sing. Tell me all that is in thy heart.” Ebba clasped her hands, and leaning upon the balustrade she said-- “If I were brave, and not a coward, I should tell thee all. Nay, I should tell the world; but I am a coward, and I durst not.”