Scarce had she time to catch the friendly admonition and act on it, as she did instantly, before the door of the outer room was thrown violently open; and, with his sallow face inflamed and fiery, and his black eye blazing with hellish light, Catiline exclaimed, as he strode in hot haste across the threshold, "At last! at last, I have thee, Julia!" CHAPTER XVII. TIDINGS FROM ROME. Time and the tide wear through the longest day. SHAKSPEARE. "At last, I have thee, Julia!" Mighty indeed was the effort of the mind, which enabled that fair slight girl to bear up with an undaunted lip and serene eye against the presence of that atrocious villain; and hope, never-dying hope, was the spirit which nerved her to that effort. It was strange, knowing as she did the character of that atrocious and bloodthirsty tyrant, that she should not have given way entirely to feminine despair and terror, or sought by tears and prayers to disarm his purpose. But her high blood cried out from every vein and artery of her body; and she stood calm and sustained by conscious virtue, even in that extremity of peril; neither tempting assault by any display of coward weakness, nor provoking it by any show of defiance. There is nothing, perhaps, so difficult to any one who is not a butcher or an executioner by trade, with sensibilities blunted by the force of habit, as to attack or injure any thing, which neither flies, nor resists, neither braves, nor trembles. And Catiline himself, savage and brutal as he was, full of ungoverned impulse and unbridled passion, felt, though he knew not wherefore, this difficulty at this moment. Had she fallen at his feet, trembling, and tearful, and implored his mercy, he would have gloated on her terrors, laughed tears and prayers to scorn, yea! torn her from an altar’s foot, to pour out upon her the vials of agony and foul pollution. Had she defied, or braved his violence, his fury would have trampled her to the earth in an instant, and murder would have followed in the footsteps of worse violence. But as she stood there, firm, cold, erect, and motionless as a statue of rare marble, with scarcely a pulse throbbing in her veins, and her clear azure eyes fixed on him with a cold and steady gaze, as if she would have fascinated him by their serene chaste influence, he likewise stood and gazed upon her with a strange mixture of impressions, wherein something akin to love and admiration were blent with what, in minds of better mould, should have been reverence and awe. He felt, in short, that he lacked ’a spur to prick the sides of his intent,’ a provocation to insult and aggression yet stronger than the passion and hot thirst of vengeance, which had been well nigh chilled by her severe and icy fortitude. ’Tis said that a lion will turn and flee, From a maid in the pride of her purity;