“Your father, the noble Severus, has married my sister Junia. Has he never told you?” “No,” Hyacintha said, the blush on her cheek fading. “No, I hear it now for the first time. I would I had never heard it; forgive me, for Junia is your sister.” “There is no need to claim forgiveness. I think as hardly of my sister as any one, but I pray daily for her conversion, and I will believe not in vain, for the Lord can change the heart and bring sweetness out of bitterness.” “Art thou too a Christian?” Hyacintha asked, with an almost imperceptible start backwards. “A Christian,” Claudius said, “ay, verily, and I would to God you were one also.” “I,” said Hyacintha, proudly. “Nay, this day is my happy day, the day when I, who have been for near ten years training under the care of the sacred virgins, have my lot appointed me to minister in the temple and sprinkle the shrine with this pure water, which I have been allowed to draw myself alone at dawn for the first time. To-morrow is our glad festival, and we shall walk through the city in a long procession, and to-night I shall for the first time keep watch alone in the temple. It is a great and wonderful thing to be a vestal! I would not exchange my lot for an Imperial diadem,” she said, with a proud dignified motion of her head. “I would I were more worthy to fulfil so high a destiny.” Claudius, who had led a Roman phalanx against hordes of barbarians, and had never feared danger or shrunk from death, felt strangely timid in the presence of this beautiful friend of his early years. He had kept her image before him, as the winning, lovely child, so full of earnestness of purpose, so gentle and tender to the slaves in her mother’s household, so full of sympathy with their pain and trouble, so devoted in her service of affection to her delicate and weakly brother. Claudius had preserved her image as a child, and loved her; now she was standing before him in the full beauty of her womanhood, and he felt his love was nearly worship. He was a Christian now. He had been won to embrace the faith by the example of a few who professed Christianity amongst Constantine’s army. Claudius had been with the Emperor’s force, when he went to repress an incursion of the Franks, one of the hardy Northern tribes on the banks of the Rhine. It was just at the time when the treacherous Maximian had taken advantage of Constantine’s absence to seize all the treasure at Arles, and dispensing it amongst the soldiers who were stationed in Southern Gaul, hoped to establish his authority by gifts and bribes. But before that was done Constantine had returned with extraordinary quickness, and Claudius had been with his army when he arrived at the gates of Arles with a force which it was impossible to resist, and which scarcely gave him time to take refuge in the nearest city of Marseilles.