"Lie down and sleep, my child, and be at peace. The Lord is with thee.
What the future holds we fear not."
There were three Christians in the servants' quarters of the lawyer's home, one was Alexis, the Greek, one was Lidia, the scullery-maid. And the third was the Old One, whose age no man knew, or whence she came.
V.
THE OLD ONE SPEAKS.
Aurelius, the lawyer, found his wife crying when he returned from business a fortnight later. It was one of those rainy days, coming early in October, when it seems as though the skies opened to let down streams of water, washing trees and bushes, drenching the heavy dust, which, during a long summer drouth had accumulated so much in the cracks of the stones on the streets, on the roofs and ledges of the houses and on the leaves of vines and flowers that even the thunder-storm on that night when Alyrus made his visit to the temple had not had force enough to remove it.
It was a desolate day. In Rome when it rains the whole aspect changes, it becomes dreary and depressing. Even people are affected by the gloom, nerves are set on edge, and Aurelius, having had a trying morning, was a little irritated to find his wife in this condition.
Remembering her weakness, he sat down beside her, took her cold hand in his and said, gently: "What is the matter, dear one? What has happened to annoy thee?"
"It is that miserable sect of Christians. I cannot bear them. Here is thy son, Martius, acting the fool, stubborn, wilful, and now Virgilia must show the same traits. It is past endurance. Something must be done to break this charm whatever it is, that controls them so. I wish that every Christian in the land would be destroyed by Jupiter. He can do it if he wishes."
The lawyer's face grew stern. One of his troubles that morning had been that everlasting affair of the Lady Octavia, who insisted on freeing her slaves, and by this had succeeded in involving herself in a law-suit which threatened disaster, because of a prior claim to a certain slave who was very valuable.
"What has Virgilia done?" he asked, and his tone boded no good to his daughter.