The Greek lifted her head and gazed with overt anxiety at the girl; Philadelphus turned toward her uneasily. Here was an opportunity for Laodice either as a disappointed adventuress or as a supplanted wife, to take revenge by exposing this pair of conspirators pledged to undermine the Gischalan. But the girl had no such thought.
"I am Laodice," she said unreadily. "What history I have belongs to another. What future shall be mine depends on others. I wait."
"If you mean to throw me off, Amaryllis, I shall not miss you," said John.
The Greek smiled and plucking Philadelphus' sleeve led both men away.
"Do not commit yourself," she said to John, "there is yet another woman under this roof. You shall have a choice."
They disappeared in the direction of her hall.
Laodice, stunned, amazed and shaken, stood still. The stock of her troubles amounted to a sum of such magnitude that she could not grasp it clearly. The entire structure which her life training and all her purposes, the hope of her house and her husband's, the future of Judea and the King to come, had constituted, had been attacked and threatened to crumble and be swept away in a few hours' time.
Out of the wreck she rescued one hope. Momus would return from the west with proofs in a few days' time–only a few days!