costly dresses, though, as he quietly remarked to Agias, the gifts
meant no more of sacrifice to him than an obol to a rich spendthrift.
He filled her ears with music all day long; he entertained her with
inimitable narrations of his own adventurous voyages and battles. And
only dimly could Cornelia realize that the gems she wore in her hair,
her silken dress, nay, almost everything she touched, had come from
earlier owners with scant process of law.

Demetrius was no common rover. He had been a young man of rare culture
before misfortune struck him. He knew his Homer and his Plato as well
as how to swing a sword. "Yet," as he remarked with half jest, half
sigh, "all his philosophy did not make him one whit more an honest
man."

And in his crew of Greeks, Orientals, and Spaniards were many more
whom calamity, not innate wickedness, so Cornelia discovered, had
driven to a life of violence and rapine.

Demetrius, too, gave no little heed to Artemisia. That pretty creature
had been basking in the sunshine of Agias's presence ever since coming
on shipboard. It was tacitly understood that Cornelia would care for
the welfare and education of Pratinas's runaway, until she reached a
maturity at which Agias could assert his claims. The young Hellene
himself had been not a little anxious lest his cousin cast obstacles
in the way of an alliance with a masterless slavegirl; for of late
Demetrius had been boasting to his kinsman that their family, before
business misfortunes, had been wealthy and honourable among the
merchant princes of Alexandria. But the worthy pirate had not an
objection to make; on the contrary, he would sit for hours staring at
Artemisia, and when Agias demanded if he was about to turn rival,
shook his head and replied, rather brusquely:--

"I was only thinking that Daphne might be about her age, and look
perhaps like her."

"Then you do not think your little daughter is dead?" asked Agias,
sympathetic, yet personally relieved.

"I know nothing, nothing," replied his cousin, a look of ineffable
pain passing over his fine features; "she was a mere infant when I was
arrested. When I broke loose, I had to flee for my life. When I could
set searchers after her, she had vanished. Poor motherless thing; I
imagine she is the slave of some gay lady at Antioch or Ephesus or
Rome now."

"And you do not know who stole her?" asked Agias.

"Don't tear open old wounds," was the retort. "I know nothing. I
think--b