They soon arrived at the hospitable villa, and shortly afterward the pleasant and social meal was served. But Paul was not himself, though the lips he loved best poured forth their fluent music in his ear, and the eyes which he deemed the brightest, laughed on him in their speaking fondness. Still he was sad, silent, and abstracted, and Julia marked it all; and when he rose to say farewell, just as the earliest shades of night were falling, she arose too; and as she accompanied him to the door, leaning familiarly on his arm, she said— "You have not told me all, Paullus. I thought so while you were yet speaking; but now I am sure of it. I will not vex you at this time with questions, but will devour my anxiety and grief. But to-morrow, to-morrow, Paullus, if you love me indeed, you will tell me all that disturbs you. True love has no concealment from true love. Do not, I pray you, answer me; but fare you well, and good fortunes follow you." CHAPTER IX. THE AMBUSH. My friends, That is not so. Sir, we are your enemies. TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA. It was already near the fourth hour of the Roman night, or about a quarter past eight of our time, when Paullus issued from the Capuan gate, in order to keep his appointment with the conspirator; and bold as he was, and fearless under ordinary circumstances, it would be useless to deny that his heart beat fast and anxiously under his steel cuirass, as he strode rapidly along the Appian way to the place of meeting. The sun had long since set, and the moon, which was in her last quarter, had not as yet risen; so that, although the skies were perfectly clear and cloudless, there was but little light by which to direct his foot-steps toward the valley of the Muses, had he not been already familiar with the way. Stepping out rapidly, for he was fearful now of being too late at the place appointed, he soon passed the two branches of the beautiful and sparkling Almo, wherein the priests of Cybele were wont to lave the statue of their goddess, amid the din of brazen instruments and sacred song; and a little further on, arrived at the cross-road where the way to Ardea, in the Latin country, branched off to the right hand from the great Appian turnpike. At this point there was a small temple sacred to Bacchus, and a little grove of elms and plane trees overrun with vines, on which the ripe clusters consecrated to the God were hanging yet, though the season of the vintage had elapsed, safe from the hand of passenger or truant school-boy. Turning around the angle of this building, Arvina entered a dim lane, overshadowed by the tall trees of the grove, which wound over two or three little hillocks, and then sweeping downward to the three kindred streamlets, which form the sources of the Almo, followed their right bank up the valley of the Muses.