o, my Egyptian! so good a drinker shall be saved if
possible. Bacchus against Isis!'

'We shall see,' said the Egyptian.

Suddenly the bolts were again withdrawn--the door unclosed; Arbaces was
in the open street; and poor Nydia once more started from her long
watch.

'Wilt thou save him?' she cried, clasping her hands.

'Child, follow me home; I would speak to thee--it is for his sake I ask
it.'

'And thou wilt save him?'

No answer came forth to the thirsting ear of the blind girl: Arbaces had
already proceeded far up the street; she hesitated a moment, and then
followed his steps in silence.

'I must secure this girl,' said he, musingly, 'lest she give evidence of
the philtre; as to the vain Julia, she will not betray herself.'

Chapter VIII

A CLASSIC FUNERAL.

WHILE Arbaces had been thus employed, Sorrow and Death were in the house
of Ione. It was the night preceding the morn in which the solemn
funeral rites were to be decreed to the remains of the murdered
Apaecides. The corpse had been removed from the temple of Isis to the
house of the nearest surviving relative, and Ione had heard, in the same
breath, the death of her brother and the accusation against her
betrothed. That first violent anguish which blunts the sense to all but
itself, and the forbearing silence of her slaves, had prevented her
learning minutely the circumstances attendant on the fate of her lover.
His illness, his frenzy, and his approaching trial, were unknown to her.
She learned only the accusation against him, and at once indignantly
rejected it; nay, on hearing that Arbaces was the accuser, she required
no more to induce her firmly and solemnly to believe that the Egyptian
himself was the criminal. But the vast and absorbing importance
attached by the ancients to the performance of every ceremonial
connected with the death of a relation, had, as yet, confined her woe
and her convictions to the chamber of the deceased. Alas! it was not
for her to perform that tender and touching office, which obliged the
nearest relative to endeavor to catch the last breath--the parting
soul--of the beloved one: but it was hers to close the straining eyes,
the distorted lips: to watch by the consecrated clay, as, fresh bathed
and anointed, it lay in festive robes upon the ivory bed; to strew the
couch with leaves and flowers, and to renew the solemn cypress-branch at
the threshold of the door. And in these sad offices, in lamentation