It grew necessary for the men to help the women, who were very weary and weak from excitement; although Lycias did not wish to call any more attention to them than was necessary, for fear that the ladies, especially Octavia, who was well known, might be recognized. All the Romans had not gone to the Circus, some were sitting in the eating-places, and women were knitting in the doorways. Fortunately, it was getting toward evening, but that would be a signal for the thousands to leave the amphitheatre and scatter to their homes.
There was need for haste.
They approached the shores of the Tiber, turned into gold by the sunlight from the setting sun. The masts were visible now.
Lycias gave a sigh of satisfaction as he saw, sitting on a grassy bank a man and a woman, who was heavily veiled. Standing beside them was a slender girl. It was Lidia, the daughter of the shepherd, who sprang forward and put her arms around her father's neck, while great tears of happiness rolled down her cheeks.
"At last! at last! thou art come. Thanks be to our God."
It had not been a difficult matter for the little scullery-maid to persuade the lawyer to venture upon a scheme as bold as it was doubtful in its outcome. Aurelius Lucanus was a broken man. He had lost his children. He had not known how dear they were to him until they disappeared. What mattered it if they were followers of Christians, members of a despised sect? They were his own, and he loved them. His business was ruined, his home deserted, the emperor no longer looked on him with favor. All was gone.
In the room near by, Claudia lay weeping. She, too, was broken-hearted. Her daughter, her ambitions, all those things which formed her life had vanished as suddenly as the dew dries upon the green grass in midsummer.
The lawyer was sitting in the garden. Bright yellow and scarlet dahlias bloomed around him; plumy lavender and rose colored asters nodded cheerfully in the chill breeze of this first of November. The water in the fountain rippled as musically as in those happy days, now gone.
That morning early, Aurelius had gone again to the Senator Adrian Soderus, to whom Virgilia had so cruelly been betrothed. It was a sign that no longer was the lawyer held in high esteem, when he was kept waiting in the outer chamber, and a message was brought him by a young slave that the Senator could no longer receive him. He would have no dealings with the parents of Christians.
Then he, too, knew their disgrace. It must have been noised—abroad in the city. Aurelius hurried home and sitting down where Claudia had rested, looking so beautiful, on her return from the amphitheatre on the Spring day which seemed so long ago, he buried his face in his hands.