Martius had only time to seize his sister's had and press it warmly, when his father's voice was heard behind them.
"Virgilia, thy mother needs thee. Go to her. She seems to be very weak. Do nothing to agitate or excite her. Sacrifice thine own wishes to hers."
He was gone, and the girl looked in bewilderment at Martius.
"Dost think that he heard what I said?" She whispered.
Martius shrugged his shoulders.
"I know not. But he is right, Virgilia. Thou must wait. For a time, we must worship in secret. Some day, all will be open to the light and we must suffer what comes. Christ will help us."
"Yes, Christ will give us strength."
All that afternoon, Virgilia sat patiently by her mother's couch. The change in the proud woman during these weeks of illness was only too apparent. It seemed as if the ardor of her hatred had burned out her strength. Her lovely eyes were lustreless. The neck on which Sahira had hung a splendid cord of sapphires from Persia, linked together with milky pearls from India, was thin and haggard. Her skin, fair and beautiful on that day when she sat so proudly by her husband and daughter in the Circus, watching the gladiatorial contest, was yellow and drawn. The jewels were a mockery in the shadow of threatened death.
It was nearing sundown when Virgilia, very tired from the hours passed in gently soothing her mother's querulous complaints, giving her cooling drinks and telling her old Grecian legends to amuse her, entered her own little cubicleum, her sleeping-chamber.
In Roman houses, the sleeping quarters were the smallest, the worst ventilated of all. It is a superstition, come down to modern times, that night air is injurious. Many ancient Roman dwellings show that rooms used for sleeping sometimes had no windows at all, the sole means of ventilation being provided by the doorway, which was curtained, opening into a larger room, or by a small trap door in the ceiling.