"No one here but Lucius Sergius Fidenas, who should have business elsewhere."
Sergius said nothing, but continued to stand with eyes fixed thoughtfully upon her face.
Her figure was tall, slender, and very graceful, her hair and eyes were dark, and her features delicate and perfectly moulded. Over all was now an expression of hoydenish mirth that bespoke the complete forgetfulness of serious things that only comes to young girls. His attentive silence seemed at last to disturb her. An annoyed look drove the smile from her lips, and, with an almost imperceptible side motion of her small head, she went on:—
"Surely Lucius Sergius Fidenas has not allowed my father to go to the Senate House with only Caius to attend him! Lucius respects my father too much for that—and too disinterestedly. It is an even more serious omission than his failure to attend the consul at Trasimenus—"
Sergius' eyes blazed at the taunt, and, struggling with the answer that rose to his lips, he said nothing for fear he might say too much.
The girl watched him closely. Her mirth returned a little at the sight of his confusion, and, with her mirth, came something of mercy.
"Oh, to be sure, his wound. I almost forgot that. Tell me, my brave Lucius, did the Gauls bite hard when they caught you in the woods and drove you and my brave uncle to Tanes? How funny for naked Gauls to ambush Roman legionaries and chase them home! Father has not spoken to Uncle Cneus since. He says it was his duty to have remained on the field, and I suppose he thinks it was yours, too, instead of running away like a fox to be shut up in his hole."
Sergius had recovered his composure now, but his brow was clouded.
"You are as cruel as ever, Marcia," he said. "And yet I know you have heard that it was the men of my maniple who carried me away, senseless from the blow of a dead man."
"Oh, you did kill him. I remember now," she resumed, with some display of interest. "You had run him through, had you not? and he just let his big sword drop on your head. I got Caius to show me about it, and I was the Gaul. Caius did not stab me, but I let the stick fall pretty hard, and Caius had a sore head for two days. I meant it for you, because you are trying to make an old woman of me when I am hardly a girl."