Lucilla was greatly excited, and a thought, that for years had been locked in the inmost shrine of her heart, to-day proved too strong for her powers of reticence. Hadrian was supposed to have murdered her father, but no one could positively assert it, though either he or another man had certainly slain the noble Nigrinus. At this moment the old suspicion stirred her soul with revived force, and lifting her right hand, as if in attestation, she exclaimed: “Oh, Fate, Fate! that my husband should be heir of the man who murdered my father!” “Lucilla,” interrupted Verus, “it is unjust even to think of such horrors, and to speak of them is madness. Do not utter it a second time, least of all to-day. What may have occurred formerly must not spoil the present and the future which belong to us and to our children.” “Nigrinus was the grandfather of those children,” cried the Roman mother with flashing eyes. “That is to say that you harbor in your soul the wish to avenge your father’s death on Caesar.” “I am the daughter of the butchered man.” “But you do not know the murderer, and the purple must outweigh the life of one man, for it is often bought with many thousand lives. And then, Lucilla, as you know, I love happy faces, and Revenge has a sinister brow. Let us be happy, oh wife of Caesar! Tomorrow I shall have much to tell you, now I must go to a splendid banquet which the son of Plutarch is giving in my honor. I cannot stay with you--truly I cannot, I have been expected long since. And when we are in Rome never let me find you telling the children those old dismal stories--I will not have it.” As Verus, preceded by his slaves bearing torches, made his way through the garden of the Caesareum he saw a light in the rooms of Balbilla, the poetess, and he called up merrily: “Good-night, fair Muse!” “Good-night, sham Eros!” she retorted. “You are decking yourself in borrowed feathers, Poetess,” replied he, laughing. “It is not you but the ill-mannered Alexandrians who invented that name!” “Oh! and other and better ones,” cried she. “What I have heard and seen to-day passes all belief!” “And you will celebrate it in your poems?” “Only some of it, and that in a satire which I propose to aim at you.” “I tremble!” “With delight, it is to be hoped; my poem will embalm your memory for posterity.” “That is true, and the more spiteful your verses, the more certainly will future generations believe that Verus was the Phaon of Balbilla’s Sappho, and that love scorned filled the fair singer with bitterness.” “I thank you for the caution. To-day at any rate you are safe from my verse, for I am tired to death.” “Did you venture into the streets?” “It was quite safe, for I had a trustworthy escort.” “May I be allowed to ask who?” “Why not? It was Pontius the architect who was with me.” “He knows the town well.” “And in his care I would trust myself to descend, like Orpheus, into Hades.” “Happy Pontius!” “Most happy Verus!”