Flaccus, who had fixed his eyes on Cypros the instant her veil was lifted, started.
"Mariamne! The murdered Mariamne!" he repeated.
"Ah, sir!" the alabarch protested, smiling. "Thou wast not born then. But I knew her: as a young man I knew her! But enter, enter! Pray favor us with thy presence at supper, noble Flaccus. It shall be an evening of festivity."
He led them through a hall so dimly lighted as to appear dark after the daylight without, and into one of the noble chambers characteristic of the opulent Orient. The whole interior was lined with yellow marble, and the polish of the pavement was mirror-like. The lattice of the windows, the lamps, the coffers of the alabarch's records, the layers for the palms and plantain, the clawed feet of the great divan were all of hammered brass. The drapery at arch and casement, the cushions and covering of the divan were white and yellow silk, and, besides a sprawling tiger skin on the floor, the alabarch's chair of authority, and a table of white wood, there was no other furniture.
The alabarch gave Flaccus his magistrate's chair, and, seating his two noble guests and their children, clapped his hands in summons.
A brown woman, with eyes like chrysolite and the lithe movements of a panther, was instantly at his elbow.
The alabarch spoke to her in a strange tongue, and the servant disappeared.
"I send for my daughter," he explained to his guests. "The waiting-woman does not understand our tongue. My daughter—the only one I have, and unmarried!"
"I remember her," Agrippa said with a smile.
At that moment in the archway leading into the interior of the house a girl appeared. She lifted her eyes to her father's face, and between them passed the mute evidence of dependence and vital attachment.