“Yes; but methinks, Casca, it is you who must now cheer me, for my heart is heavy within me, and I scarce dare to look forward or to look within. You speak of those far-off days. Do you think I have forgotten them? Nay, they are written on my heart. I would that I were a careless fellow again, wrestling in the games at Verulam, and contented because I knew of no life greater than the soldier’s. I am a Christian, it is true, and ought to rejoice; but, somehow, there is no rejoicing left in me.”
“I pray you, good Claudius,” Casca said, “do not speak thus. I, too, have had my sorrows. I have lost my fair young wife, Ianthe, and no grief can be greater than mine was; but I can rejoice yet in the powers God has given me, and I live for Him and for our child.”
“Ah! then, Casca, yours is not a desolate, lonely life like mine. I think, it is true, of the life beyond, and I crave for it with wearying longing; but the beloved of my soul, your sister Hyacintha, is in bitter trouble, and I, who would die for her, cannot move, or stretch forth a finger, to help her.”
And now, just as Casca was about to ask Claudius to tell him everything, the sound of little naked feet pattering on the floor was heard, and the curtain which separated Casca’s room from the inner chamber shook, and from the division in the middle peeped out a little sunny face, rosy with sleep, with eyes yet dim from dreams, and coral lips drooping at the corners, as she caught sight of a strange man in earnest conversation with her father. Casca rose and held out his arms, and then there was a sudden rush and a pair of clinging arms wound round his neck, as Cynthia buried her golden head on his shoulder and said:—
“Send away that big old man.”
“Nay, nay, my Cynthia, that is not the courtesy I would fain teach thee,” said another voice; and turning, Claudius saw an elderly woman, plainly dressed in a loose woollen garment, girt around the waist by a broad belt, and wearing on her head a close cap, which concealed her hair.
“Nay, my Cynthia,” she repeated—and then Claudius laid his hand on her arm.
“Do you not know me, Ebba?”
The great tide of memory swept over poor Anna; danger, torture, the dungeon, and the death she had so dreaded, seemed to cover her again with a great mantle of fear. Her knees trembled, and she would have fallen forward had not Claudius’s strong arms prevented it.
“Poor Ebba!” Claudius said, “do you think you are in the dungeons again?”