"Bring the lady," Flaccus insisted, "and we shall lay our plans thereafter." Lydia sat still; she knew Cypros' believing nature; that she would see nothing but a generous offer in the proconsul's intent; that to prevent the simple woman from consenting to destroy herself the whole villainy of the proconsul would have to be uncovered to her--doubtless before Flaccus, with unimaginable results. The alabarch looked down on his daughter's fair head, away from Flaccus' threatening gaze and waited for her answer. "My lord," she said composedly, "we have complicated our associations with thee and this unfortunate family long enough. Perchance we erred. At best it may no longer be maintained. Though the Lady Cypros is uninformed, I and others know why thou hast been tolerant of our people of late; what deed thou didst attempt in the passage back of Rannu's Temple on the closing night of Flora's feast; what disaster overtook thee there; why Agrippa, now, is undone and what thou meanest in truth to do with his princess." There was silence. Then the alabarch's hand dropped down on Lydia's curls. "Daughter, thou art weaponed with testimony new to thy father; thou hast kept thy arms concealed. Yet I will take them up, now." He raised his eyes to Flaccus. "Perchance thou wouldst explain to me my daughter's meaning?" After a dangerous dilation of his gray-brown eyes, Flaccus seemed more than ever composed. "Is my favor worth aught to the Jews?" he asked. "Jews," the alabarch replied, "do not purchase immunity at sacrifice of the honor of their women." "I am not enraged, Alexander," was the reply. "I am only diverted. But the Herod under sentence of death and the Alexandrians loosed upon the Regio Judaeorum, it seems that the Lady Herod will soon be without a protector or a roof-tree. She had much better go--to Rome!" He strode out of the presiding-room and into the street before the alabarch could conduct him to the door. Lysimachus and his daughter looked at each other. Their thoughts reached out and gathered in for contemplation all the details and the results of the climax. Then the alabarch opened his arms to his daughter and she slipped down on his breast. "Tell me what thou knowest against Flaccus, and why I have not learned of this?" he urged. It was a sore trial to Lydia's conscience to leave out her own part in the story she told, but the alabarch was less attentive to the source of her information than to the information itself. "I did not tell it sooner, because, in ignorance thou wouldst not be constantly hiding from Flaccus a distaste, distrust and watchfulness that infallibly would have controlled thee hadst thou known his hands were red with the blood of a man of whom he spoke fair and whom he pretended to love, before the world!" "What shall we do?" she asked after a long silence, for the press of many evils had stunned her resourcefulness. "Tell the princess first," the alabarch responded. "And then?"