They continued on their way.
Bovillae, not being one of the towns participating in the Festival of Diana, was closed for the night, its gates shut fast, its walls dark. Going round it was a trying detour over rough cross-roads.
After they were again on the Appian Road they were for a second time overtaken by the same band of horsemen. When their hoof-beats had grown faint in the distance ahead, Vocco ranged his horse alongside the litter and asked:
“Did you notice the man on the white horse?”
“I recognized him,” said Brinnaria briefly.
The fog held all the way to the Appian Gate, which they reached as some watery sun-rays struggled through the mist, held until they reached the Atrium.
Out of her litter tumbled Brinnaria in Flexinna’s rumpled finery, feeling unescapably recognizable, even inside her double veil and under her broad-brimmed, tied-down travelling hat.
But the heavy-built, sinewy slave-woman who guarded the portal of the Atrium passed her in without remark. She met no one on her way up to her suite, where she found Utta squatted outside her bedroom door.
Flexinna was incredulously delighted, pathetically overjoyed to see her.
“You have a wonderful larder here,” she said. “Every single thing I asked for was b-b-brought me at once. I d-d-didn’t have any appetite, b-b-but I had to have food. And I g-g-got it.”