“What, daughter? Even now, after his flight as a criminal?”
“Even now.”
Quintus and Cornelia looked inquiringly, first at the priest, and then at the girl.
“Why should I conceal it?” cried Claudia. “You may hear me say it—and all the world may know it—I love him, he is mine now and forever!”
“Poor child!” said her father, and Lucilia went up to her and led her out of the room. In the solitude of her own room the strength, that had kept her blood at boiling point, gave way entirely. She flung herself into her sister’s arms, and cried long and bitterly.
The high-priest too retired, and shut himself up in his study till dinner-time. The information brought him by Parthenius, and the flight of Cinna and Aurelius more particularly, had been a great shock to him. And then the sight of the young creature, who stood up so bravely for her love—and yet—he could not hesitate—who must give it up forever. That had been a dagger-thrust in his heart. He struggled for firmness, for cold and stern resolve. He told himself that true kindness, in this case, lay in severity and outward hardness; every sign of wavering, every expression of tender impulse, would only make the inevitable harder for his child to bear. The human heart can better endure the sudden extinction of its happiness than its slow decline, fanned by the breath of a faint hope which is too weak to revive the flame of life, and yet too strong to allow it to die out.
For many hours this man, who was usually so prompt and decisive, sat bent over his table as if in a trance. If Sextus Furius had not been one of the victims of this nocturnal raid, Titus Claudius would, even now, have arranged his daughter’s betrothal to this suitor before the week was out. The very cruelty of such a proceeding seemed to him wholesome and bracing. But, as it was, Furius too—for some unimaginable reason—was an inmate of the Mamertine prisons. What was to be done? He considered the possibilities of a journey, and remembered that Quintus, the year before, had expressed a purpose some day to pass a few months at Athens. The house of Claudia had many illustrious friends in the Attic capital, who would have welcomed the brother and sister with the greatest pleasure, and have treated them as lovingly and as liberally as their own. But the plan was rejected as soon as it was made. The unfavorable season was at hand; the south-westerly gale, which a few days since had swept over the whole coast of Latium and Campania, had devastated the country south of Antium. Sea-voyages were at an end for the season; no one would venture out to sea but under pressing necessity.
Finally, the priest came to the conclusion, that Claudia would best and soonest get over her grief in her parent’s house and the old familiar habits of her daily life; he, therefore, decided on leaving the poor child in peace, when once he had explicitly impressed on her that Aurelius was lost to her forever, and then tacitly treating the matter as settled once for all.
The whole family eat their meal in conscious silence: Quintus and Cornelia remained as guests. Claudia begged to be excused; she would join them later, in the sitting-room.
When they rose from table, Lucilia, Octavia, and the betrothed couple went to walk up and down the peristyle, and Titus Claudius went to his daughter’s room. It was not without an uneasy feeling about his heart, that he desired the slave-girl who sat outside the door to raise the curtain, and he felt sad enough as he entered the room, which was one of the prettiest and pleasantest in the house. Claudia had made it a charming retreat for her studies and favorite pursuits. To the right lay the apartment she shared with Lucilia; but here she alone was mistress, and everything in the room seemed to have taken the stamp of her individuality. The unpretentious and tasteful furniture seemed to proclaim her frank simplicity. On the wall hung her gilt cithara with its red ribbon, the confidant of her hopes and dreams. There lay her favorite authors neatly arranged in ivory cases,[65] the Greeks to the left, the Latins to the right—above all Homer, Sophocles, and the odes of Sappho. There were a few costly vases of sardonyx, statuettes in Parian marble, and in a purple-lined niche a head of Jupiter, copied from the world-famed work of Phidias.[66] There were too a silver-mounted spindle and a small hand-loom, besides all sorts of toys and baubles, such as young people were wont to give and receive during the Saturnalia. In short, the pretty bower betrayed itself in every detail as the retreat of a bright-natured, busy and happy girl.