happiness, but now he knows
that she hated him, that she hates him, and will die with hatred in her
heart.

But Acte, usually mild and timid, burst forth in her turn with
indignation. How had he tried to win Lygia? Instead of bowing before
Aulus and Pomponia to get her, he took the child away from her parents
by stratagem. He wanted to make, not a wife, but a concubine of her, the
foster daughter of an honorable house, and the daughter of a king.
He had her brought to this abode of crime and infamy; he defiled her
innocent eyes with the sight of a shameful feast; he acted with her as
with a wanton. Had he forgotten the house of Aulus and Pomponia Graecina,
who had reared Lygia? Had he not sense enough to understand that there
are women different from Nigidia or Calvia Crispinilla or Poppaea, and
from all those whom he meets in Caesar's house? Did he not understand at
once on seeing Lygia that she is an honest maiden, who prefers death to
infamy? Whence does he know what kind of gods she worships, and whether
they are not purer and better than the wanton Venus, or than Isis,
worshipped by the profligate women of Rome? No! Lygia had made no
confession to her, but she had said that she looked for rescue to him,
to Vinicius: she had hoped that he would obtain for her permission from
Caesar to return home, that he would restore her to Pomponia. And while
speaking of this, Lygia blushed like a maiden who loves and trusts.
Lygia's heart beat for him; but he, Vinicius, had terrified and offended
her; had made her indignant; let him seek her now with the aid of
Caesar's soldiers, but let him know that should Poppaea's child die,
suspicion will fall on Lygia, whose destruction will then be inevitable.

Emotion began to force its way through the anger and pain of Vinicius.
The information that he was loved by Lygia shook him to the depth of his
soul. He remembered her in Aulus's garden, when she was listening to his
words with blushes on her face and her eyes full of light. It seemed
to him then that she had begun to love him; and all at once, at that
thought, a feeling of certain happiness embraced him, a hundred times
greater than that which he desired. He thought that he might have won
her gradually, and besides as one loving him. She would have wreathed
his door, rubbed it with wolf's fat, and then sat as his wife by
his hearth on the sheepskin. He would have heard from her mouth the
sacramental: "Where thou art, Caius, ther