Afer smiled and looked at the handsome Prefect with a sly askant look.
‘Faith, I know not—not I,’ answered Sejanus.
‘Um!’ said his follower.
There was something in the manner of this ejaculation which proved too much for the other’s attempted gravity, and he burst out into a laugh.
‘You would seem to insinuate something, my dear Titus,’ he remarked; ‘and yet it is quite true, incredible as it may appear, that our lovely and wilful dame has thought fit to visit Capreae entirely in obedience to her own whim.’
‘Most strange!’ rejoined Afer pithily.
‘Most true!’
‘There must be a strong reason for such a dainty, exquisite, proud, city-bred lady to come hither—do you not think so?’
‘Whether there be a strong inducement, or merely a woman’s curiosity I am equally unaware.’
‘Such privations, such hardships, such fatigues, such inconveniences for a female to undergo, who has never known even the hardness of a wrinkle in her bed of down. There is never a man in Rome who would not give five years of his life to be able to boast of this feat.’