uly magnificent were the
dress and jewels in which the damsel had appeared in the amphitheatre!

"How they must have hailed her!" thought the old woman when she had
helped Melissa to exchange her dress for a simpler robe, and the girl
sat down to write. "If only the mistress had lived to see this day! And
all the other women must have been bursting with envy. Eternal gods!
But, after all, who knows whether the good luck we envy others is great
or small? Why, even in this house, which the gods have filled to the
roof with gifts and favors, misfortune has crept in through the key
hole. Poor Philip!

"Still, if all goes well with the girl. Things have befallen her such
as rarely come to any one, and yet no more than her due. The fairest and
best will be the greatest and wealthiest in the empire."

And she clutched the amulets and the cross which hung round her arm and
throat, and muttered a hasty prayer for her darling.

Argutis, for his part, did not know what to think of it all. He, if any
one, rejoiced in the good fortune of his master and Melissa; but Heron's
promotion to the rank of praetor had been too sudden, and Heron demeaned
himself too strangely in his purple-bordered toga. It was to be hoped
that this new and unexpected honor had not turned his brain! And the
state in which his master's eldest son remained caused him the greatest
anxiety. Instead of rejoicing in the honors of his family, he had at his
first interview with his father flown into a violent rage; and though
he, Argutis, had not understood what they were saying, he perceived that
they were in vehement altercation, and that Heron had turned away in
great wrath. And then--he remembered it with horror, and could hardly
tell what he had seen to Alexander and Melissa in a reasonable and
respectful manner--Philip had sprung out of bed, had dressed himself
without help, even to his shoes, and scarcely had his father set out in
his litter before Philip had come into the kitchen. He looked like one
risen from the grave, and his voice was hollow as he told the slaves
that he meant to go to the Circus to see for himself that justice was
done. But Argutis felt his heart sink within him when the philosopher
desired him to fetch the pipe his father used to teach the birds to
whistle, and at the same time took up the sharp kitchen knife with which
Argutis slaughtered the sheep.

The young man then turned to go, but even on the threshold he had
stumbled over t