y looked like beings of the
same race. Nothing could be more immense than the difference, more wild
than the incongruity between them. It was sickness hand-in-hand with
health; pain marshalled face to face with enjoyment; darkness ranged in
monstrous discordance by the very side of light.

The next instant--just as the astonished senator was endeavouring to
frame a suitable answer to the solemn adjuration that had been
addressed to him--Ulpius seized his arm, and opening a door at the
inner extremity of the apartment, led him up some stairs that conducted
to the interior of the house.

They passed the hall, on the floor of which still lay the fragments of
the broken lute, dimly distinguishable in the soft light of daybreak;
and ascending another staircase, paused at a little door at the top,
which Ulpius cautiously opened, and in a moment afterwards Vetranio was
admitted into Antonina's bed-chamber.

The room was of no great extent; its scanty furniture was of the most
ordinary description; no ornaments glittered on its walls; no frescoes
adorned its ceiling; and yet there was a simple elegance in its
appearance, an unobtrusive propriety in its minutest details, which
made it at once interesting and attractive to the eye. From the white
curtains at the window to the vase of flowers standing by the bedside,
the same natural refinement of taste appeared in the arrangement of all
that the apartment contained. No sound broke the deep silence of the
place, save the low, soft breathing, occasionally interrupted by a
long, trembling sigh, of its sleeping occupant. The sole light in the
room consisted of a little lamp, so placed in the middle of the flowers
round the sides of the vase that no extended or steady illumination was
cast upon any object. There was something in the decent propriety of
all that was visible in the bed-chamber; in the soft obscurity of its
atmosphere; in the gentle and musical sound that alone interrupted its
magical stillness, impressive enough, it might have been imagined, to
have awakened some hesitation in the bosom of the boldest libertine ere
he deliberately proceeded to intrude on the unprotected slumbers of its
occupant. No such feeling of indecision, however, troubled the
thoughts of Vetranio as he cast a rapid glance round the apartment
which he had ventured so treacherously to invade. The fumes of the
wine he had imbibed at the banquet had been so thoroughly resuscitated
by the op