‘Only one in such sad straits,’ he responded. ‘You can guess probably who it is.’
Plautia shrugged her shoulders carelessly.
‘So may one love you and perish—O wretched example!’ he said bitterly. ‘If the miserable man could only have seen that careless shrug of your pitiless shoulders.’
‘The idiot—he has seen many such, doubtless. Am I to be answerable for the presumption of such fools?’ said she, [pg 303]turning her head swiftly toward him with a withering blast of scorn and contempt.
The knight’s face became like pallid marble, but, apparently impenetrable, he replied—
‘Surely not, if it be of their own cultivation. There can be no blame to you.’
‘Thanks!’
‘Nevertheless one should feel pity and not scorn; for who knows how soon the same fate may overtake oneself? Ill-starred Martialis is not the first nor the last who has suffered from misplaced infatuation.’
Her face was in profile, and his eyes scanned it keenly.
‘Of course Plautia knows I am speaking of Caius Martialis, the bosom friend of Apicius,’ he went on, with slow distinctness. ‘There is also another Martialis, his brother Lucius, a Centurion of the Pretorian guard, at present in attendance here on our worthy friend the Prefect. Do you know this one?’