that threatens mischief to us all, and his trumpet voice cannot hurt you
more than it does me. Must we endure him at table with us every day?"

"So Hadrian desires."

"Then I shall start for Rome," said Verus decidedly. "My wife wants to be
back with her children, and as praetor, it is more fitting that I should
stay by the Tiber than by the Nile."

The words were spoken as lightly as though they were nothing more than a
proposition to go to supper, but they seemed to agitate the Empress
deeply, for her head, which had seemed almost a fixture during her
conversation with Titianus, now shook so violently that the pearls and
jewels rattled in the erection of curls. There she sat for some seconds
staring into her lap.

Verus stooped to pick up a gem that had fallen from her hair, and as he
did so she said hastily:

"You are right. Apollonius is intolerable. Let us send him to meet my
husband."

"Then I will remain," answered Verus, as pleased as a wilful boy who has
got his own way.

"Fickle as the wind," murmured Sabina, threatening him with her finger.
"Show me the stone--it is one of the largest and finest; you may keep
it."

When an hour later, Verus quitted the hall with the prefect, Titianus
said:

"You have done me a service cousin, without knowing it. Now can you
contrive that Ptolemaeus and Favorinus shall go with Apollonius to meet
the Emperor at Pelusium?"

"Nothing easier" was the answer.

And the same evening the prefect's steward conveyed to Pontius the
information that he might count on having probably fourteen days for his
work, instead of eight or nine only.

CHAPTER IV.

In the Caesareum, where the Empress dwelt, the lights were extinguished
one after another; but in the palace of Lochias they grew more numerous
and brighter. In festal illuminations of the harbor pitch cressets on the
roof, and long rows of lamps that accumulated architectonic features of
the noble structure, were always kindled; but inside it, no blaze so
brilliant had ever lighted it within the memory of man. The harbor
watchmen at first gazed anxiously up at Lochias, for they feared that a
fire must have broken out in the old palace; they were soon reassured
however, by one of the prefect's lictors, who brought them a command to
keep open the harbor gates that night, and every night till the Emperor
should have arrived, to all who might wish to proceed from Lochias to the
city, or from the city to the peninsul