‘Alas, Plautia, take what there is! I want it not—I would give it a hundred times over to gain one kind look from your eyes. He was your brother—born of the same mother[pg 51]—to me he was more than a brother. There he lies before us. Cannot his dead body, bereft of likes and dislikes, soften your heart to me who loved him most?’
‘Martialis, you knew his intention before this night,’ said she, disregarding his pleading tone as she would the whining of a dog.
‘No, before Heaven—or maybe we had never seen this bitter night.’
‘’Tis strange, and you two secretless friends, as I have heard you say.’
‘This, at least, was dark to me, as to every one else, until he drank from yon fatal cup and fell back where he lies.’
Plautia took up the cup from the table where Charicles had placed it, and, with a natural curiosity, smelled at it, as he had done.
‘Take care!’ ejaculated Martialis, as the golden rim seemed to graze her ripe lips. ‘There is yet sufficient left to harm more than one—so the physician has said—beware lest a drop smear thy lip.’
‘Tush, Martialis!—I am not so tired of life,’ she replied contemptuously, setting down the goblet; ‘who comes?’
‘Festus, the lawyer, or thy uncle, Sabellus.’
‘Festus?’