And the lady leaned back upon her pillow, and very soon the dark lashes were resting on her cheeks, and she was wrapt in a gentle slumber.
There are always people in all ages of the world of the same easy temperament as this wife of the noble Severus. The city might be deserted; the rage of a tyrannical governor might vent itself on the brave and loyal-hearted Alban, by torture and death, but what did it concern Cæcilia?
As I said, many other ladies of her rank had gone out that day to see the cruel sight, and to feast their eyes on a scene from which delicately nurtured women might have been supposed to turn with loathing. But Cæcilia, the wife of Severus, hated trouble, and looking on life as one long festival, disliked to think of anything which seemed to point to the probability, that to many it was a season of trial and suffering. So, lulled by the fountain in the atrium of her husband’s beautiful villa, she enjoyed a dreamy repose, and was unconscious of all that was passing about her, and that her little daughter had put aside the shells and also disappeared behind the curtain.
Ebba was on the gallery that ran round the atrium, and when she saw Hyacintha pull aside the curtain she came to the head of the marble stairs, and beckoned to her.
The child went up to her, saying—
“What is it you said, Ebba?”
“Come hither and look from the gallery over the country, and you will see.”
As she spoke, Ebba mounted still higher to the square opening in the roof, on one side of which was a small covered gallery, whence an extensive view was spread out, of the town and river and country beyond. The child gazed upon the view before her with wistful, questioning eyes.
The throng of people spread over the fields, which were smiling in the June sunshine; and along the great Watling Street, and across the bridge, there was a continuous stream of all ages and sexes.
The low murmur of the moving multitude reached the place where the Briton slave and her little mistress stood, and upon a hill rising on the opposite bank by the river there was an erection, round which the glittering helmets of soldiers were shining in the sun. Hyacintha drew closer to Ebba, and said, in a low tone—