d perhaps found an enemy. The full dark
eye yet gazed up at her with the same apparent moistened appeal for
friendly sympathy; but to AEnone's alarmed instinct it now seemed as
though behind that glance there was an inner depth of cold, calculating
scrutiny. Still, almost unheeding the gentle gesture of the hand
extended to raise her, the Greek knelt upon the floor, and, with an
appearance of mingled timorousness and humility, laid her lips upon the
gathered fingers; but now there appeared to be no natural warmth or glow
in the pressure or real savor of lowliness in the attitude, but rather a
forced and studied obsequiousness. For the instant AEnone paused, as
though uncertain how to act. Then, fearing to betray her doubts, and
hoping that her startled instinct might have deceived her, she bent
forward once more and raised the captive to her feet.

It had all been the work of an instant; passing so quickly that the
pause between the impulse and its completion could hardly have been
noticed. But in that instant a change had swept over the expressions of
both; and as they now stood opposite and gazed more intently upon each
other, the change still progressed. The face of the young Roman matron,
but a moment before so glowing with sympathy and radiant with a
new-discovered hope of future happiness, now seemed to shrink behind a
veil of despairing dread--the fear chasing away the joy as the shadow
flits along the wall and banishes the sunlight; while, though every
feature of the Greek still seemed clothed with trembling humility, yet,
from some latent depths of her nature, a gleam of something strangely
wild and forbidding began to play upon the surface, and invest the
moistened eye and quivering lip with an undefinable repulsive harshness.

'Your name?' said AEnone, rousing herself with exertion, as though from a
painful dream.

'Leta, my lady,' was the reply, uttered in a tone of despairing sadness,
and with eyes again cast upon the floor.

'Leta,' repeated AEnone, touched in spite of her forebodings by that
guise of an unhappiness which might, after all, be real. 'It is a
fair-sounding name, and I shall call you always by it. Poor girl! you
are an exile from your native land, and I--I cannot call myself a Roman.
We must be friends--must we not?'

She spoke rather in the tone of one hoping against evil auguries than as
one indulging in any confident anticipations of the future. The Greek
did not answer, but again slo