of his voice harmonised with his visage, and he spoke as
one who feels a scornful impatience with the affairs of men. 'At Rome,
they wrangle about goats' wool, as is their wont. Anything else? Why,
yes; the freedman Chrysanthus glories in an ex-consulate. It cost him
the trifle of thirty pounds of gold.'

Basil laughed contemptuously, half angrily.

'We must look to our honours,' he exclaimed. 'If Chrysanthus be
ex-consul, can you and I be satisfied with less than
ex-Praetorian-Prefect? What will be the price, think you? Has Bessas
hung out a tariff yet in the Forum?'

'He knows better than to fix a maximum, as long as a wealthy fool
remains in the city--though that won't be much longer, I take it.'

'Why come you hither, dear my lord?' urged Basil, with more seriousness.

Regarding him with a grave eye, his friend replied in an undertone:

'To spy upon you.'

'Ha!--In very truth?'

'You could wish me a more honourable office,' Marcian went on, smiling
sadly. 'Yet, if you think of it, in these days, it is some honour to be
a traitor to both sides. There has been talk of you in Rome. Nay, who
knows how or why! They have nothing to do but talk, and these victories
of the Goth have set up such a Greek cackle as was never heard since
Helen ran away to Troy,--and, talking of Greek, I bear a letter for you
from Heliodora.'

Basil, who had been listening gravely, started at this name and uttered
an idle laugh. From a wallet hanging at his girdle, Marcian drew forth
the missive.

'That may wait,' said Basil, glancing indifferently at the folded and
sealed paper before he hid it away. 'Having said so much, you must tell
me more. Put off that sardonic mask--I know very well what hides
beneath it--and look me in the eye. You have surprised some danger?'

'I heard you spoken of--by one who seldom opens his lips but to ill
purpose. It was not difficult for me to wade through the shallows of
the man's mind, and for my friend's sake to win his base confidence.
Needing a spy, and being himself a born traitor, he readily believed me
at his beck; in truth he had long marked me, so I found, for a cankered
soul who waited but the occasion to advance by infamy. I held the
creature in my hand; I turned him over and over, and he, the while,
thinking me his greedy slave. And so, usurping the place of some other
who would have ambushed you in real enmity, I came hither on his
errand.'

'Marcian,' said the listener, 'I could make