'Yonder is a new slave for you--the present about which I yesterday spoke. I trust it will prove that during my absence I was not unmindful of you. It was at Samos that I obtained her. There, you may remember, we tarried, after taking the town and burning part of the fleet.' Samos! Where had AEnone heard that place mentioned? Searching into the recesses of her memory, it at last flashed upon her. Was it not from Samos that he--Cleotos--had come? And was it fate that forced the recollection of him ever upon her? She turned pale, but by a violent effort succeeded in maintaining her self-possession and looking up with a smile of apparent interest upon her husband as he spoke. 'She had nearly fallen the prey of one of the common soldiers,' he continued; 'but I, with a few pieces of gold, rescued her from him, picturing to myself the gratification you would feel at being so fitly attended. And that you might the better appreciate the gift, I have retained her till to-day before showing her to you, in order that you might first see her recovered from the toil of travel and in all her recovered beauty. A rare beauty, indeed, but of a kind so different from thine that your own will be heightened by the contrast rather than diminished. How many sestertia I have been offered for her, how many high officers of my forces have desired to obtain her for service upon their own wives, I cannot now remember. But I have refused and resisted all, for I would that you should be known throughout all Rome by the beauty of those in waiting about you, even as you are now known by your own beauty. Pray, accept of her, therefore, as your attendant and companion, for it would sorely disappoint me were you to reject such a pleasing gift.' 'Let it be as my lord says,' responded AEnone. 'And if I fail in due utterance of my thanks, impute it not to want of appreciation of the gift, but rather to inability of proper expression.' It was with real gratitude that AEnone spoke; for, at the instant, a thought of cheering import flashed upon her, swelling her heart with joy, and causing her to welcome the captive girl as a gift from the gods. Here, perhaps, as though in direct answer to her prayer for sympathy, might be the one for whom her heart had been longing; coming to her, not laden with any of that haughty pride and ill-befitting knowledge with which the Roman world about her reeked, but rather as she herself had once come--with all her unstained provincial innocence of thought yet nestling in her shrinking soul--one, like herself, an exile from a lowly state, and with a heart filled with those simple memories which must not be too carelessly exposed--so seldom do they gather from without anything but cruel ridicule or cold lack of comprehension--one whom she could educate into an easy intimacy with her own impulses and yearnings, and thus, forgetting all social differences, draw closer and nearer to her as a friend and confidant.