ister bewailing herself they
followed her example without knowing at first what Arsinoe was crying
for, but soon with terror and horror at their father lying there stiff
and disfigured. The Emperor, who had never had either son or daughter
of his own, found nothing so intolerable as the presence of crying
children. However he endured the wailing and whimpering that surrounded
him till he had ascertained the condition of the man lying on the ground
before him.

"He is dead," he said in a few minutes. "Cover his face, Master."

Arsinoe and the children broke out afresh, and Hadrian glanced down at
them with annoyance. When his eye fell on Arsinoe, whose costly robe,
merely pinned and slightly stitched together had come undone with the
vehemence of her movements and were hanging as flapping rags in tumbled
disorder, he was disgusted with the gaudy fluttering trumpery which
contrasted so painfully with the grief of the wearer, and turning his
back on the fair girl he quitted the chamber of misery.

Gabinius followed him with a hideous smirk. He had directed the
Emperor's attention to the mosaic pavement in the steward's room, and
had shamelessly accused Keraunus of having offered to sell him a work
that belonged to the palace, contrasting his conduct with his own
rectitude. Now the calumniated man was dead, and the truth could never
come to light; this was necessarily a satisfaction to the miserable man,
but he derived even greater pleasure from the reflection that Arsinoe
could not now fill the part of Roxana, and that consequently there was
once more a possibility that it might devolve on his daughter.

Hadrian walked on in front of him, silent and thoughtful. Gabinius
followed him into his writing-room, and there said with fulsome
smoothness:

"Ah, great Caesar, thus do the gods punish with a heavy hand the crimes
of the guilty."

Hadrian did not interrupt him, but he looked him keenly and enquiringly
in the face, and then said, gravely, but coolly:

"It seems to me, man, that I should do well to break off my connection
with you, and to give some other dealer the commissions which I proposed
to entrust to you."

"Caesar!" stammered Gabinius, "I really do not know--"

"But I do know," interrupted the Emperor. "You have attempted to mislead
me, and throw your own guilt on the shoulders of another."

"I--great Caesar? I have attempted--" began the Ligurian, while his
pinched features turned an ashy grey. "You ac