"Selfishness, my lord?"
"Aye! Art thou not of the House of Cæsar? Art thou not my kinswoman? Dost thou not receive at my hands honour, position, everything that places thee above the common herd of humanity? Were I not the Cæsar, where wouldst thou be? Not in this palace surely, not the virtual queen of Rome, but, mayhap, a handmaid to another Cæsar's wife, an attendant on his daughter.... Thou dost seem to have forgot all this, Augusta."
"Nay, gracious lord, I have forgot nothing! Your goodness to me——"
"And yet wouldst deliver me over into the hands of mine enemies," he said with increased dolefulness, "and not raise a finger to save me."
"I would give my life for the Cæsar," she interposed firmly, "and this the Cæsar knows."
"Wouldst not even take a husband, when by so doing thou wouldst save the Cæsar from death."
"My gracious lord speaks in riddles ... I do not understand."
"Didst not understand, girl, that I but wished to test thy loyalty to me? Thou—like so many alas!—dost so oft prate of unbounded attachment to Cæsar. To-day, for the first time, did I put that attachment to the test, and lo! it hath failed me."
"Try me, my lord," she said, "and I'll not fail thee. But give me thy trust as well as thy commands."
She advanced close to where he sat, apparently a broken-down, sorrowful man, stricken with grief. The mighty Cæsar now was far more powerful than he had been a while ago when he raged and stormed and threatened, for he had appealed to the strongest feeling within her—he had appealed to her loyalty.