"Charging us with abduction?" she remarked.
"Charging no man with abduction, but declaring that she was missing from thy father's roof!"
Classicus' face filled with contrite humiliation under her gaze.
"Why so late with the story?" she asked. "Why didst thou not come to us before thou wast persuaded to go!"
"Charge me not with more folly than I did commit!" he besought. "I was caught by his servants in the Brucheum and haled before him, where, in all excitement, he told that the Lady Cypros was missing, and that I, as the safe friend of the alabarch and the proconsul, had been commissioned to enlist Cæsar's interest in her cause! The vessel ready for Puteoli waited only on the night-winds to sail! I was not given time to change my raiment, or to fill my purse from mine own treasure, much less to take counsel with thy father and learn the truth!"
"And besides Flaccus, we must now take Cæsar into consideration in protecting this unhappy woman!" she exclaimed.
"No!" he cried. "A friend of Agrippa's, whom I met in Rome, stopped me in time!"
She looked away from him and he took her hand.
"Am I pardoned?" he asked plaintively.
"Thou didst no harm; but it should serve to awaken thee to the evil in this dangerous Roman! If only Agrippa would return, how readily the skies would brighten for us all!"