‘Here, your Excellency.’
‘To Hypatia. No. I will honour my bride elect with my own illustrious presence. As I live, here is a morning’s work for a man with a racking headache!’
‘Your Excellency has the strength of seven. May you live for ever!’
And really, Orestes’s power of getting through business, when he chose, was surprising enough. A cold head and a colder heart make many things easy.
But Philammon’s whole soul was fixed on those words. ‘His bride elect!’.... Was it that Miriam’s hints of the day before had raised some selfish vision, or was it pity and horror at such a fate for her—for his idol?—But he passed five minutes in a dream, from which he was awakened by the sound of another and still dearer name.
‘And now, for Pelagia. We can but try.’
‘Your Excellency might offend the Goth.’
‘Curse the Goth! He shall have his choice of all the beauties in Alexandria, and be count of Pentapolis if he likes. But a spectacle I must have; and no one but Pelagia can dance Venus Anadyomene.’
Philammon’s blood rushed to his heart, and then back again to his brow, as he reeled with horror and shame.
‘The people will be mad with joy to see her on the stage once more. Little they thought, the brutes, how I was plotting for their amusement, even when as drunk as Silenus.’