And even as his restless eyes swept over the surrounding landscape, they turned to where, in the shadow of the stately palaces of Tiberius and of Augustus, lay the house of Dea Flavia. Its gilded portals threw back with brilliant intensity the weird and elusive light of the waning moon, and high above, upon the balustrade of the roof, gigantic bronze groups of quaint and misshapen beasts looked ghoul-like against the canopy of the sky.
All within the massive walls was dark and still; near to the vestibule a couple of ancient cypresses made a natural arch overhead, and in the tender branches of a group of acacias close by, the evening breeze sighed with gentle, melancholy murmurings amongst the leaves.
Instinctively Taurus Antinor turned to walk a few steps toward the house, and soon reached a spot from whence his gaze could command the colonnaded vestibule, with its mosaic pavement sunk a few steps below the level of the street. Somewhere near him, though he could not see it, a bosquet of heliotrope and white lilies sent an intoxicating fragrance into the air.
From far away—where the marshes stretched their limitless expanse toward the sea—came the melancholy cry of a bittern, calling to his absent mate.
A vague longing surged in the strong man's heart; he stretched out his arms up to the dark, starlit canopy above, and a sigh, half impatient, wholly melancholy, escaped his half-closed lips.
His eyes tried to pierce the marble walls behind which there bloomed—stately and proud—a beautiful white lily.
Wholly against his will, the man's thoughts flew back to that midday hour in the Forum, when Dea Flavia had stood before him in all the exquisite glory of her youth and her loveliness, with that wilful curl round her chiselled lips and the delicate brows drawn together in a frown of child-like obstinacy. How beautiful she was and how strangely pathetic had been her isolation in the midst of so much grandeur.
Even now he thought of her—asleep possibly somewhere in this gorgeous palace—all alone, despite the thousands of slaves around her; friendless, despite the might of the House of Cæsar of which she was so proud.
Through one of the tiny windows there peeped a flickering light. Taurus Antinor marvelled if that were her sleeping-room and, closing his eyes, pictured her there, resting on embroidered coverlets and cushions, her fair hair falling in waves around her face at rest; and he wondered whether in sleep a dewy tear had perchance put a priceless diamond on her golden lashes.
Bitter thoughts of the men whom he had just quitted surged back in his heart; they wished to make of this young girl a tool for the fashioning of their own ambitious schemes.