As his voice fell quietly on the calm air the female figure came forth and confronted him.
‘Martialis!’ said the voice of Plautia, with a faint tremor in its rich tones.
He started and scanned her keenly. ‘That is my name,’ he replied ‘Was it you who bade me come? I seem to know your voice. What can you want with me, and who may you be?’
‘Accept the grateful thanks of Plautia for your kind and ready obedience to her wish.’
‘Plautia—you—here! And yet I was sure of the voice!’ he muttered.
She put back the hood of her cloak, and turned her face to him full in the light. He surveyed, indeed, to his intense astonishment, the beautiful face of the adventurous damsel; and, although the feeble rays of the thin moon overlaid with their own wan paleness the tell-tale tints of her rich flooding cheeks, they rather, on the other hand, lit up the liquid brilliance of her dark eyes. Her white hand stole from the folds of her cloak, and rested gently on his arm. Young, high-spirited, warm and impressionable, the look and soft touch of this lovely woman thrilled him through in despite of himself; but his lips closed a trifle closer, and his form stretched aloft almost imperceptibly.
‘Yes, ’tis I, Plautia!’ she murmured, with her haughty head drooping downward, and her hand falling from his arm at the same time.
‘I am wonderstruck!’ he said in a colder tone; ‘in the name of heaven, Plautia, how came you to be in such a spot as this—such a place as this island?’
‘No matter how, Centurion; I am here—that is enough.’
‘But yet it is incomprehensible—have you been here long?’