‘Who?’ demanded Afer, starting at the fierce intensity of the epithet.
‘The coward—the liar, whoever he may be.’
‘Humph, that is true; if we could only find him out.’
He looked at her with a sidelong glance. Her face had taken a cadaverous hue, and her forehead seemed to shine as if bedewed with moisture. Her eyes, under their knitted eyebrows, were directed for the moment in fierce abstraction among the thickets of the gardens, so that he had ample opportunity for observing her.
‘Such a fabrication, mischievous as it is, is too idle to cause you concern, Plautia,’ he said, breaking silence. ‘I see it has troubled you as I dreaded; but, in my humble opinion, you consider it too much.’
‘Can I help, and I a woman?’ she retorted fiercely; ‘but I will be even with the coward.’
‘He must first be found; and I think the best plan would be to commence with the individual with whom your name has been linked in such a shameless fashion.’
‘Do you think it is he?’
‘Nay, I cannot say. But as a beginning must be made somewhere in the inquiry, that is the point I should select. I don’t see but what it is as likely as any. He is tall, well-favoured, conceited, like all Pretorians, and more so, probably, since the Prefect makes much of him. He has probably told his comrades some such story, as a boast of his own superior attractions. It is a weakness of the military nature, and of the gorgeous Pretorian nature in particular, to be vain of a supposed fascination over females.’
Plautia smiled disdainfully.