A long time after she heard the wheels of his chariot roll away from before the alabarch's porch. Then with slow, weary steps she went down into the house. She would seek out her father, and discover what to expect from Flaccus and if disaster could be averted from the beloved head of Marsyas and the unhappy Herod. Not until then would she entertain the suggested sacrifice which Classicus had so deftly demanded.
But when she reached the inner chamber, with the arch opening into the alabarch's presiding room, she saw within the proconsul.
She hesitated, surprised and alarmed, but presently her father, raising his eyes, saw her and signed to her to enter.
The proconsul stopped in the middle of a sentence to greet her, not from courtesy, but because she was a consideration. She took her place on an ivory footstool at the foot of the alabarch's chair and seemed to efface herself.
Lysimachus trifled with a stick of wax and heard Flaccus to the end of the sentence. The old tone of assumed cordiality was gone. Flaccus had ascended again to the plane of a legate speaking with a Jew.
"So I shall pay thee thy five talents and release the lady, that she may be sent to Rome," he concluded.
"The gossip of the lady's arrival in Rome would work havoc, sir. She would be there engaging Antonia's attention, which should be devoted without lapse, in other directions."
"The Herod's lady need not arrive with the blare of trumpets," was the cool retort, "and since thy talents are returned to thee, Lysimachus, thou art not asked to carry thy concern into Rome."
The thin cheeks of the alabarch grew pink and Lydia raised a pair of somber eyes to the proconsul's face.
"It is not a matter of my loan," the alabarch answered without a tremor in his melodious voice, "but it is that I held her in hostage in the beginning."