iths of cunning--these locks
are wondrous strong! Time flies--I may starve--starve! if you are not
quick! Go--go! Yet stay--it is horrible to be alone!--the air is like a
charnel--and the scorpions--ha! and the pale larvae; oh! stay, stay!'

'Nay,' said Nydia, terrified by the terror of the priest, and anxious to
confer with herself--'nay, for thy sake, I must depart. Take hope for
thy companion--farewell!'

So saying, she glided away, and felt with extended arms along the
pillared space until she had gained the farther end of the hall and the
mouth of the passage that led to the upper air. But there she paused;
she felt that it would be more safe to wait awhile, until the night was
so far blended with the morning that the whole house would be buried in
sleep, and so that she might quit it unobserved. She, therefore, once
more laid herself down, and counted the weary moments. In her sanguine
heart, joy was the predominant emotion. Glaucus was in deadly
peril--but she should save him!

Chapter XV

ARBACES AND IONE. NYDIA GAINS THE GARDEN. WILL SHE ESCAPE AND SAVE THE
ATHENIAN?

WHEN Arbaces had warmed his veins by large draughts of that spiced and
perfumed wine so valued by the luxurious, he felt more than usually
elated and exultant of heart. There is a pride in triumphant ingenuity,
not less felt, perhaps, though its object be guilty. Our vain human
nature hugs itself in the consciousness of superior craft and
self-obtained success--afterwards comes the horrible reaction of
remorse.

But remorse was not a feeling which Arbaces was likely ever to
experience for the fate of the base Calenus. He swept from his
remembrance the thought of the priest's agonies and lingering death: he
felt only that a great danger was passed, and a possible foe silenced;
all left to him now would be to account to the priesthood for the
disappearance of Calenus; and this he imagined it would not be difficult
to do. Calenus had often been employed by him in various religious
missions to the neighboring cities. On some such errand he could now
assert that he had been sent, with offerings to the shrines of Isis at
Herculaneum and Neapolis, placatory of the goddess for the recent murder
of her priest Apaecides. When Calenus had expired, his body might be
thrown, previous to the Egyptian's departure from Pompeii, into the deep
stream of the Sarnus; and when discovered, suspicion would probably fall
upon the Nazarene atheis