‘Because I can save you the journey.’
Masthlion smiled.
‘You go to seek to know whether Lucius be a true man or false,’ she continued, with animation and a heightened colour; ‘you may stay at home, for I can tell you.’
‘And whence did you gain the knowledge I am truly in want of, child?’ he said.
‘Here!’ she answered proudly, as she laid her hand over her heart.
A smile of admiration, and yet compassionate, rested on her father’s lips, as he gazed into her kindling eyes, and watched [pg 72]the glowing hues spread over her exquisite face. New graces, fresh nobility and dignity, unknown before, seemed to blossom forth upon the maiden beneath his wondering eyes. His acute brain comprehended the change; it was no longer the child, but the woman.
‘The foolish heart is so often mistaken, Neæra,’ he said, touched by her simple faith; ‘it would not be wise to trust entirely thereto.’
But she only shook her head.
‘Facts are against you,’ he continued; ‘how many have acted from their impulse and have lived to use their eyes and minds soberly afterwards? But no,—no more of that! I had rather try and bale the bed of the sea dry than attempt to cure a lovesick girl of her folly. Meanwhile, I shall go to Rome, as I intended, and try to satisfy my own mind, after the fashion of cold, heartless men.’
‘You expect to come back with bad news of Lucius, and thus forbid me to think of him again.’