‘Had it been so, I would have retired in the same manner ere this,’ she replied, with scarcely veiled scorn.
The Emperor laughed silently.
‘Thank heaven,’ he said, ‘which leaves you dependent on mortal means of locomotion like the rest of us, and so preserves your presence to us. I, myself, prefer warm flesh and blood to these airy immortals whom we never know, save in the fables of the poets. I leave you, therefore, for the present, lady, with the satisfaction that you cannot depart through the air. I am the richer in your acquaintance, which must be extended. Now that I have the assurance of my own eyes of your comfort, I will intrude no longer at present.’
‘For that receive my thanks, Caesar,’ she cried, advancing, as he retired; ‘but circumstances make it impossible for me to remain—at all hazards I must quit the island.’
‘To-day it is quite impossible,’ returned Tiberius, gliding nearer the door; ‘to-morrow, I am satisfied, your mind will be changed. Till then, farewell, fair Plautia!’
As the last word left his lips he contrived to retreat, and summarily close the conference by shutting the door upon it, yet so dexterously as to leave no impression of unseemly haste. Plautia sprang after him, but her devoted slave seized her skirts and besought her to be prudent.
‘Fool!’ cried her mistress in a fury, flashing out at the same time a superb oath and a blow. Her retainer started back in affright, and Plautia rushed out into the peristyle. Not a sight or a sound of a living being were distinguishable. [pg 291]She flew along what seemed to be the Emperor’s most likely line of retreat, and boldly called upon him in loud tones. But nothing answered save the short echo of her own voice: the place seemed deserted. Passage ran out of passage in bewildering intricacy. Again she stopped and called, and again the echoes sank around her into dead silence, as she stood with her senses strained to their utmost. Was the palace really inhabited? If so, what part? She pressed on again, keeping to what she assumed was the main corridor. Suddenly her course was stopped by a door. In the dim light she sought in vain for a handle or latch, or anything which might cause the door to yield. Nothing but a smooth hard surface met her touch, wherever it strayed: there was not even a keyhole. Wasting no time, therefore, she instantly turned back. On either hand she had passed the entrances of room after room. She darted in and out, exploring them with wonderful energy. She was fully roused, but more with passion than sense of danger. Her explorations, however, availed her nothing. Some of the apartments were furnished, and more were just as the workmen’s hands had left them. All alike were uninhabited. Forming another resolution, she relinquished this task, in order to make her way back to her own apartments. The time to be consumed in this, however, was a matter dependent on chance, since her movements had become merely at random. With nothing to guide her she hastened along, doubling on her track now and again when she considered herself to be wrong, or when her flying steps led her into a cul-de-sac. At last she struck the right path, and finally ran out into the peristyle of her own rooms, very much relieved in mind and temper, and scant of breath. She found she had made a circuit of the maze. Nearly opposite, her slave was standing by the open door, where she had been left in the agonies of doubt and fear.
‘’Tis nothing but a maze of empty passages and rooms,’ exclaimed her mistress, bursting on her savagely. ‘Where the people dwell, I know not—nor where the old dotard has disappeared to. I had caught him if you had not held me, fool. Come, let us see if we cannot find the outer door through which we entered, and so let us begone; it was nigh at hand somewhere.’
Plautia had no recollection of the way, but her companion had been more attentive. They went almost straight to the narrow outer door which they required. To their joy it opened to their touch, and they passed outside. Before them was a long stretch of ornamental garden of irregular shape, but rectangular in the main. It was picturesquely laid out with artificial mounds, grottoes, and groves, in the miniature semblance of a sylvan wilderness, and the whole was encircled by a wall. In this outside domain, as within-doors, no living being was visible.
The storm still roared and blustered. The winding irregular parapet of the wall was the horizon, and above it the gray watery masses of clouds drove across the sky. Even, sheltered as they were, the trees and shrubs of the tiny thickets and groves bent low to the blast.