ce, and it may
be that I can serve you better therein than any you esteem your graver
friends. There, now, I see your face. Holy Mary I how wan and worn it
is. From my heart I pity you, Basilidion. Come now, tell me the story.
I have heard fifty versions, some credible, some plain fable. Confide
in me; who knows but I may help you.'

'Scoff as you will,' was his answer. 'It is your privilege. But in
truth, lady, I have little time to waste.'

'And in truth, lord, your courtesy has suffered since you began to peck
and pine for this little Hun.'

'Hun?'

'Oh, I cry pardon! Goth, I should have said. Indeed, there are degrees
of barbarism--but, as you will. I say again, I care not the clipping of
my smallest nail.' She held her hand towards him; very white it was,
and soft and shapely, but burdened with too many rings. 'Tell me all,
and I will help you. Tell me nothing, and have nothing for your pains.'

'Help me?' exclaimed Basil, in scornful impatience. 'Am I such a fool
as to think you would wish to help me, even if you could?'

'Listen to me, Basil.' She spoke in a deep note which was half
friendliness, half menace. 'I am not wont to have my requests refused.
Leave me thus, and you have one more enemy--an enemy more to be dreaded
than all the rest. Already I know something of this story, and I can
know the whole of it as soon as I will; but what I want now is to hear
the truth about your part in it. You have lost your little Goth; of
that I need no assurance. But tell me how it came about.'

Basil stood with bent head. In the portico, at a little distance, there
began to sound the notes of a flute played by some itinerant musician.

'You dare refuse me?' said Heliodora, after waiting a moment. 'You are
a bolder man than I thought.'

'Ask what you wish to know,' broke from the other. 'Recount to you I
will not. Put questions, and I will reply if I think fit.'

'Good.'

Heliodora smiled, with a movement which made all her trappings of
precious metal jingle as though triumphantly. And she began to
question, tracking out all Basil's relations with Veranilda from their
first meeting at Cumae to the day of the maiden's disappearance. His
answers, forced from him partly by vague fear, partly by as vague a
hope, were the briefest possible, but in every case he told the truth.

'It is well,' said Heliodora, when the interrogation was over. 'Poor,
poor Basilidion! How ill he has been used! And not even a kiss from t