And he hastened away. Doris slipped into the doorway of a side room, which was closed only by a heavy curtain, for at that moment she would as soon have met a raging wild beast as the haughty lady from whom she had nothing to expect but insult and unkindness. Hadrian’s interview with his wife had lasted barely a quarter of an hour, and it must have been anything rather than amiable, for his face was scarlet, while Sabina’s lips were perfectly white, and her painted cheeks twitched with a restless movement. Doris was too much excited and terrified to listen to the royal couple, still she overheard these words uttered by the Emperor in a tone of the utmost decision. “In small matters and where it is fitting I let you have your way; more important things I shall this time, as always, decide by my own judgment--my own exclusively.” These words were fraught with the fate of the gatehouse and its inhabitants, for the removal of the “hideous hut” at the entrance of the palace was one of the “small matters” of which Hadrian spoke. Sabina had required this concession, since it could not be pleasant to any one visiting Lochias to be received on the threshold by an old Megaera of evil omen, and to be fallen upon by infuriated dogs. But Doris so little divined the import of Hadrian’s words that she rejoiced at them, for they told her how little he was disposed to yield to his wife in important things, and how could she suspect that her fate and that of her house should not be included among important matters, nay the most important? Sabina had quitted the anteroom leaning on her chamberlain and Hadrian was standing there alone with his slave Mastor. The old woman would not be likely to have another such favorable opportunity of supplicating the all-powerful man who stood before her, without the hindrance of witnesses, to exercise his magnaminity and clemency towards her son. His back turned to her; if she could have seen the threatening scowl with which he stood gazing on the ground she would surely have remembered the architect’s warning and have postponed her address till a future day. How often do we spoil our best chances by following an urgent instinct to arrive at certainty as early as possible, and by not being strong enough to postpone opening our business till a favorable moment offers. Uncertainty in the present often seems less endurable than adverse fate in the future.