CHAPTER XX - ACCUSATION
AFTER Almo’s redemption and his departure for Syria Brinnaria calmed down. Her feverish activity abated and vanished. She ceased to take any interest in the speed of her litter-bearers or of her carriage-teams. She took her outings for their own sake, not merely to feel herself transported rapidly from somewhere to anywhere. She kept an oversight of her stock-farms, but she left the management of them almost entirely to her bailiffs. On music she spent more of her time and in it she took an intenser delight.
Life in the Atrium altered chiefly through the growing up of Terentia, whose fifteenth birthday was celebrated soon after Almo left Italy, and by the steady waning of Causidiena’s eyesight. She could still recognize familiar persons when between her and the strong light of a door or window in the daytime; she could still place pieces of wood on the fire, if it was burning well. But she was plainly verging on total blindness. Except in so far as it was modified by pride in Terentia and solicitude for Causidiena, life in the Atrium flowed on as it had for centuries.
Reports from Almo were uniformly good. From the first he displayed all the qualifications requisite for a commander in chief. For him everything promised well.
Under these conditions Brinnaria throve. Her natural vigor had always been such that she never had showed any outward signs of the strain to which she had been subjected. Uniformly she had looked handsome and healthy. But now, if anything, she looked healthier and handsomer than ever. She was then thirty-two years old. At ten years of age she had looked eighteen, at eighteen she had looked twenty-four. At thirty-two she still looked no more than twenty-five. Her hair was abundant and glossy, her eyes bright, her cheeks rosy; she was neither slender nor plump, but a well-muscled, graceful woman, decidedly young-looking, and altogether statuesque in build and carriage, but very much alive in her springy suppleness.
About a year after Almo’s departure for Syria Lutorius came to see her one morning, his face grave.
He indicated that they had best confer alone. In her tiny sanctum he came straight to the point.
“Daughter,” he said, “my news is as bad as possible. You are formally accused of the worst misconduct.”
“Why look so gloomy?” said Brinnaria. “That is comic, not tragic. Who’s the fool accuser?”
“Calvaster, as you might conjecture,” he answered; “and grieve to have to inform you,” he added, “that this is no laughing matter.”