"I can produce Cypros," he answered, torn by the inevitable.
"No!" Lydia cried.
"If Agrippa cares so little for her—" the alabarch began, but Lydia put off his arm and stood away from him.
"This matter is neither thine nor Agrippa's to decide! Cypros is a good woman and she shall be kept secure—even against herself, if need be! Thou shalt not bring her before Flaccus!"
"Lydia, I am brought to decide between her and thee!"
"Thou canst suffer dishonor and peril, even as Cypros," Classicus put in, to Lydia. "We are no less unwilling to surrender thee to the unknown charges Flaccus brings against thee, than thou art to give up Cypros!"
"Flaccus is no arbiter of the virtue of women! He is not Cæsar, beyond whom there is no human appeal! Let him remember that it is no longer the old man Tiberius who is emperor of the world, but the young man Caligula, whose warmest friend is a Jew! Let him touch Cypros at his peril!"
"Daughter, why should Cæsar defend a woman for whom not even her husband cares?"
There was no ready reply to this, and Lydia's face grew white.
"Is it like thee, my father, to abandon the wholly undefended?" she asked.