“Ah! and I have two fair daughters, whom I have left with their mother at Marseilles; and here, if I mistake not, comes one of yours.”
For at that moment, speeding towards the place where Claudius sat, came the graceful figure of a young girl, dressed in pure white silk, her over-mantle of pale greenish-blue, and a handkerchief embroidered with gold, in the familiar pattern we call the “key pattern,” thrown over her sunny head.
“Nay, I have no ties of home, Varrus; I never married. She who is coming towards us is as dear as any daughter. Why does she tarry?”
For Cynthia had suddenly stopped, and, throwing her large crimson satchel to her maid, she skirted the marble basin of the fountain with swift steps.
“I see! I see!” exclaimed the young man; “a little child is dangerously near the brink of the fountain—and——”
He said no more, but sprang across the emerald turf to the edge of the deep marble basin, where the clear waters were gently rocking on their breast the broad leaves of the water-lily, already showing their snowy heads from the thick green calyx.
But the waters suddenly became disturbed by something more than the gentle fall of the jets of the fountain. They were swollen into little wavelets, and as the two elder men reached the spot they heard a cry, and saw Heraclitus plunge into the basin, which was some six feet in depth, and some two hundred feet in circumference.
“My mistress plunged in to save a child who had fallen into the water,” exclaimed Cynthia’s attendant. “Ah me! Ah me! Will she be drowned?”
Then the girl, after the fashion of such maidens in every time, uttered a long and piercing shriek, which brought to the spot a good many of those who were wandering about in the Museum gardens on this early spring morning.
Claudius’s face was blanched with horror, and he clutched the arm of his friend Varrus for support.