“Shsh! Shsh!” cried both the girls, smiling in spite of themselves. “Elissa is listening to all we are saying—just look at her.”
“Yes, yes, you wicked people, and she hath been listening for the last quarter of an hour,” cried Elissa, springing to her feet as red as a rose. “But really, my aunt is too bad, she maketh me ashamed; say, what shall we do with her for punishment? put her in the fish pond I think.” Bounding across the open space, she playfully seized upon the merry little woman, and aided by the two others, dragged her in spite of her cries, screams, and vigorous resistance to the very brink of the marble basin. She struggled violently, and but with difficulty escaped her fate.
“Oh, dear me! think of my complexion—cold water in the afternoon is bad for it. Oh! I did not mean a word, dear Elissa. Oh, dear me, I shall die,” and with a vigorous final effort for freedom, as she was really a very strong young woman, suddenly she pushed both Elissa and Melania together over the brink so that they fell with a splash into the shallow pond. Then being left alone with the plump Cleandra, who had no strength whatever, she speedily overcame her, and threw her in after the others, remaining with torn garments and dishevelled hair, shrieking with laughter, and panting for breath on the bank.
“Now there is naught for us but to have a bathe,” cried Elissa gaily; and first drenching the princess with a shower of spray, and then springing up the marble steps, the three girls quickly threw off their thin, wet, clinging garments.
Standing there together in a pretty group for a brief minute or two, poised on the top of the marble steps, with arms raised in graceful curves while loosening the fillets of silver from the hair that fell in masses to the hips, they seemed in all their youthful beauty like the three graces personified.
At that very moment, from behind the trees, the sound was heard of a horse’s hoofs galloping on the turf, and in a second an armed warrior, mounted on a black charger covered with foam and utterly exhausted, appeared upon the scene. At the same time, a great sound of shouting was heard in the town without the garden walls, which shouting was taken up again and again, till the clamour seemed literally to fill the air. The shouting sounded like the cheers for victory.
The princess was the first to recover her composure.
“Why, it’s Maharbal,” she cried; “jump into the water, girls, instantly. Fancy his coming like that!” Then, rushing in front of the warrior, she wildly waved her hands at the horse, shouting, “Go back! Maharbal, go away, thou wicked man, go back. Dost not see that the girls are bathing?”
At that moment they all plunged into the water once more like frightened swans.
“In the name of Hannibal!” cried the young warrior, “let me pass. I must speak to Elissa, and instantly, or my head will fall,” and he held up Hannibal’s signet ring before the dripping princess’s astonished gaze.