sake, perhaps, he
would spare her husband. But Melissa? What would her fate be if she were
dragged out of her hiding-place?--and she must be discovered! He had
threatened to cast her to the beasts; and ought she not to prefer even
that fearful fate to forgiveness and a fresh outburst of Caesar's
passion?

Pale and tearless, but shaken with alarms, she bent over the balustrade
of the stairs and murmured a prayer commending herself, her husband, and
Melissa to God. Then she hastened up the steps. The great doors leading
to the chambers of mystery stood wide open, and the first person she met
was her husband.

"You here?" said he in an undertone. "You may thank the gods that your
kind heart did not betray you into hiding the girl here. I trembled for
her and for ourselves. But there is not a sign of her; neither here nor
on the secret stair. What a morning--and what a day must follow! There
lies Caesar's lion. If his suspicion that it has been poisoned should be
proved true, woe to this luckless city, woe to us all!"

And Caesar's aspect justified the worst anticipations. He had thrown
himself on the floor by the side of his dead favorite, hiding his face in
the lion's noble mane, with strange, quavering wailing. Then he raised
the brute's heavy head and kissed his dead eyes, and as it slipped from
his hand and fell on the floor, he started to his feet, shaking his fist,
and exclaiming:

"Yes, you have poisoned him! Bring the miscreant here, or you shall
follow him!"

Macrinus assured him that if indeed some basest of base wretches had
dared to destroy the life of this splendid and faithful king of beasts,
the murderer should infallibly be found. But Caracalla screamed in his
face:

"Found? Dare you speak of finding? Have you even brought me the girl who
was hidden here? Have you found her? Where is she? She was seen here and
she must be here!"

And he hurried from room to room in undignified haste, like a slave
hunting for some lost treasure of his master's, tearing open closets,
peeping behind curtains and up chimneys, and snatching the clothes,
behind which she might have hidden, from the pegs on which they hung. He
insisted on seeing every secret door, and ran first down and then up the
hidden stairs by which Melissa had in fact escaped.

In the great hall, where by this time physicians and courtiers had
gathered round the carcass of the lion, Caesar sank on to a seat, his
brow damp with heat, and stared at