in dismay from even the thought of striving for it, and even she, for the moment, recoiled. But she was of too determined a nature to falter long. The higher the object to be attained the fewer would be the competitors, and the greater the chance of success to unwearying determination. And if there were but one chance of success in a thousand, it were still worth the struggle.
This great thought which stimulated her ambition was nothing less than the resolution to become the wife of the imperator Sergius. At first it startled her with its apparent wild extravagance; but little by little, as she weighed the chances, it seemed to become more practicable. There was, indeed, nothing grossly impossible in the idea. Men of high rank had ere now married their slaves, and the corrupted society of Rome had winked at mesalliances which, in the days of the republic, would not have been tolerated. And she was merely a slave from accidental circumstances—being free born, and having, but a month before, been the pride and ornament of a respectable though lowly family. Once let her liberty be restored, and the scarcely perceptible taint of a few weeks' serfdom be removed from her, and she would be, in all social respects, fully the equal of the poor, trembling maid of Ostia, to whom, a few years before, the patrician had not been ashamed to stoop.
This bar of social inequality thus removed, the rest might be in her own hands. Sergius no longer felt for his wife the old affection, under the impulse of which he had wedded her; and the few poor remains of the love which he still cherished, more from habit than otherwise, were fast disappearing. This was already so evident as to have become the common gossip of even the lowliest slaves in the household. And he loved herself instead, for not only his actions, but his words had told her so. A little more craft and plotting, therefore—a little further display of innocent and lowly meekness and timid obedience—a few more well-considered efforts to widen the conjugal breach—a week or two more persistent exercise of those fascinations which men were so feeble to resist—jealousy, recrimination, quarrels, and a divorce—and the whole thing might be accomplished. In those days of laxity, divorce was an easy matter. In this case there was no family influence upon the part of the wife to be set up in opposition—but merely an old centurion, ignorant and powerless. A few writings, for form's sake—and the day that sent the weeping wife from the door might install the manumitted and triumphant slave in her place.
All aglow with the ravishing prospect—her eager hopes converting the possible into the probable, and again, by a rapid change, the probable into the certain, the Greek stood spurning the needle work at her feet. Then glancing around, the whim seized upon her to assume, for a moment in advance, her coming stately dignity. At the side of the room, upon a slightly elevated platform, was a crimson lounge—Ænone's especial and proper seat. Over one arm of this lounge hung, in loose folds, a robe of purple velvet, with an embroidered fringe of pearls—a kind of cloak of state, usually worn by her upon the reception of ceremonious visits. To this lounge Leta strode, threw herself upon it, drew the velvet garment over her shoulders, so that the long folds fell down gracefully and swept the marble pavement at her feet, and there, half sitting, half reclining, assumed an attitude of courtly dignity, as though mistress of the palace.
And it must be confessed that she well suited the place. With her lithe, graceful figure thrown into a position in which the gentle languor of unembarrassed leisure was mingled with the dignity of queenly state—with her burning eyes so tempered in their brilliancy that they seemed ready at the same instant to bid defiance to impertinent intrusion, and to bestow gracious condescension upon suppliant timidity—with every feature glowing with that proper pride which is not arrogance, and that proper kindliness which is not humility—there was probably in all Rome no noble matron who could as well adorn her chair of ceremony. Beside her, the true mistress of the place would have appeared as a timid child dismayed with unaccustomed honors; and in comparison, the empress herself might not fill her throne in the palace of the Cæsars with half the grace and dignity.
Then, as she there sat, momentarily altering her attitude to correspond the better with her ideas of proper bearing, and gathering into newer and more pleasing folds the sweeping breadths of the velvet mantle, the door was slowly swung open, and there glided noiselessly in, clad in its neat and coarse tunic, the timid figure of her old lover Cleotos.
For an instant they remained gazing at each other as though paralyzed. Cleotos—who had looked to see her in her simple white vestment as of old, and had expected at her first glance to rush to her arms, and there be allowed to pour forth his joy at again meeting her, never more to part—beheld with dismay this gorgeously arrayed and queenly figure. This could not be the Leta whom he had known, or, if so, how changed! Was this the customary attire of slaves in high-placed families? Or could it be the token of a guilty favoritism? His heart sank within him; and he stood nervously clinging against the door behind him, fearing to advance, lest, at the first step, some terrible truth, of which he had already seemed to feel the premonitions, might burst upon him.
And she, for the moment, sat aghast, not knowing but that the gods, to punish her pride and ambition, had sent a spectre to confront her. But being of strong mind and but little given to superstitious terrors, she instantly reasoned out the facts of his simultaneous captivity with herself and coincidence of ownership; and her sole remaining doubt was in what manner she should treat him. They had parted in sorrow and tears, and she knew that he now expected her to fall into his arms and there repeat her former vows of constancy and love. But that could not be. Had he come to her but an hour before, while her dreams of the future were of a vague and unsatisfactory character, she might have acted upon such an impulse. But now, a glorious vision of what might possibly happen had kindled her ambition with brighter fires than ever before; and could she surrender all that, and think again only upon starving freedom in a cottage home?
'Is it thou, Cleotos? Welcome to Rome!' she said at length, throwing from her shoulder the purple cloak, and approaching him. As she spoke, she held out her hand. He took it in his own, in a lifeless and mechanical sort of way, and gazed into her face with a strange look of inquiring doubt, which momentarily settled into an expression of deeper apprehension. The blackness of despair began to enter into his soul. Now that she was divested of her borrowed richness, she looked more like herself, and that was surely her voice uttering tones of greeting; but somehow her heart did not seem to be in them, and, for a certainty, this had not been her wonted style of welcome.
'I thought,' she continued, 'that thou wert slain. Certainly when I parted from you ere you fled into the mountains—'
'You know that I fled not at all,' he interrupted, the color mounting into his temples. 'Why do you speak so, Leta? I retired to the mountains to meet my friends there and with them carry on the defence; and, previous thereto, I conducted you to what I believed to be a place of safety. And I fought my best against the foe, and was brought nigh unto death. This I did, though I can boast of but a weak and slender frame. And it is hard that the first greeting of one so well loved as you should be a taunt.'
'Nay, forgive me,' she said. 'I doubt not your valor. It was but in forgetfulness that I spoke. I meant it not for a taunt.' And in truth she had not so meant it. It was but the inadvertent expression of a feeling which the sight of his feeble and boyish figure unwittingly made upon her—an incapacity to connect deeds of valor with apparent physical weakness. But this very inability to judge of his true nature by the soul that strove to look into her own rather than by material impressions was perhaps no slight proof of the little unison between her nature and his.
'Sit down here,' she continued, 'and tell me all that has happened to you.' And they sat together, and he briefly told her of his warlike adventures, his wound, his captivity, his recognition of herself, and his successful attempt to be once more under the same roof with her. And somehow it still seemed to him that their talk was not as of old, and that her sympathy with his misfortunes was but weak and cheerless; and though he tried to interweave the customary words of endearment with his story, there was a kind of inner check upon him, so that they came not readily to his lips as of old. And she sat, trying to listen, and indeed keeping the thread of his adventures in her mind; but all the while finding her attention fail as she speculated how she could best give that explanation of her
