him in your way!
Besides, for honor--if I read Lucia's eyes rightly, there is not much of
that to emperil."

When he spoke of his son, she covered her face in her richly jewelled
hands, and a slight shudder shook her whole frame. When she looked up
again, she was pale as death, and her lips quivered as she asked--

"Must I, then? Oh! be merciful, my Sergius."

"You must, Aurelia!" he replied sternly, "and that now. Our fortunes, nay,
our lives, depend on it!"

"_All_--must she give all, Lucius?"

"All that he asks! But fear not, he shall wed her, when our plans shall be
crowned with triumph!"

"Will you swear it?"

"By all the Gods! he shall! by all the Furies, if you will, by Earth, and
Heaven, and Hades!"

"I will go," she replied, something reassured, "and prepare her for the
task!"

"The task!" he muttered with his habitual sneer. "Daintily worded, fair
one; but it will not, I fancy, prove a hard one; Paullus is young and
handsome; and our soft Lucia has, methinks, something of her mother's
yielding tenderness."

"Do you reproach me with it, Sergius?"

"Nay! rather I adore thee for it, loveliest one; but go and prepare our
Lucia." Then, as she left the room, the dark scowl settled down on his
black brow, and he clinched his hand as he said--

"She waxes stubborn--let her beware! She is not half so young as she was;
and her beauty wanes as fast as my passion for it; let her beware how she
crosses me!"

While he was speaking yet a slave entered, and announced that Paullus
Caecilius Arvina had arrived, and Curius, and the noble Fulvia; and as he
received the tidings the frown passed away from the brow of the
conspirator, and putting on his mask of smooth, smiling dissimulation, he
went forth to meet his guests.

They were assembled in the tablinum, or saloon, Arvina clad in a violet
colored tunic, sprinkled with flowers in their natural hues, and Curius--a
slight keen-looking man, with a wild, proud expression, giving a sort of
interest to a countenance haggard from the excitement of passion, in one
of rich crimson, fringed at the wrists and neck with gold. Fulvia, his
paramour, a woman famed throughout Rome alike for her licentiousness and
beauty, was hanging on his arm, glittering with chains and carcanets, and
bracelets of the costliest gems, in her fair bosom all too much displayed
for a matron's modesty; on her round dazzling arms; about her swan-like
neck; wreathed in the profuse tresses of her