“There is someone watching us! Farewell!” she whispered in a breathless, frightened voice, and hurried away, turning her head once, however, to cast a glance over her shoulder, and then hastened home faster than before. Esca looked after her while she continued in sight, either unconscious of their vicinity, or at all events not noticing a pair of bold black eyes that were fixed upon him with an expression of arch and ludicrous surprise. He turned angrily, however, upon the intruder, when the black eyes had gazed their fill, and their owner burst out into a loud, merry, and mocking laugh.
CHAPTER XII
MYRRHINA
Myrrhina’s voice was at all times pitched in a high key; her accents were very distinct and shrill, admirably adapted for the expression of derision or the conveyance of sarcastic remarks.
“So I have run you into a corner at last,” she said, “and a pretty hunt you have given me. ’Tis to draw water, of course, that you come down to the Tiber-side, just at sunset; and you met her quite by accident, I daresay, that slip of a girl in her wisp of black clothes, who flitted away just now like a ghost going back again to Proserpine. Ah! you gape like a calf when they put the garland on him for sacrifice, and the poor thing munches the very flower-buds that deck him for destruction. Well, you at least are reserved for a nobler altar, and a worthier fate than to give your last gasp to a sorceress in the suburbs. Jupiter! how you stare, and how handsome you look, you great, strong barbarian, when you are thoroughly surprised!”
She put her face so close up to his, to laugh at him, that the gesture almost amounted to a caress. Myrrhina had no slight inclination to make love to the stalwart Briton on her own account, pending the conclusion of certain negotiations she felt bound to carry out on her mistress’s. These were the result of a conversation held that morning while the maid was as usual combing out her lady’s long and beautiful hair.
Valeria’s sleep had been broken and restless. She tossed and turned upon her pillow, and put back the hair from her fevered cheeks and throbbing temples in vain. It was weary work to lie gazing with eyes wide open at the flickering shadows cast by the night-lamp on the opposite wall. It was still less productive of sleep to shut them tight and abandon herself to the vision thus created, which stood out in life-like colours and refused to be dispelled. Do what she would to forget him, and conjure up some other object, there was the [pg 87]young barbarian, towering like a demigod over the mean effeminate throng; there were the waving linen garments, and the reeling symbols, and the tossing hands, and the scowling faces of the priests of Isis; there was the dark-clad girl with her graceful pliant form; and there, yes, always there, in his maddening beauty, was the tall brave figure, gathering itself in act to strike. She could not analyse her feelings; she believed herself bewitched. Valeria had not reached the prime of her womanhood, without having sounded, as she thought, every chord of feeling, tasted of every cup that promised gratification or excitement. She had been flattered by brave, courted by handsome, and admired by clever men. Some she fancied, some she liked, some she laughed at, and some she told herself she loved. But this was a new sensation altogether. This intense and passionate longing she had never felt before. But for its novelty it would have been absolutely painful. A timid girl might have been frightened at it; but Valeria was no timid girl. She was a woman, on the contrary, who, with all the eagerness and impetuosity of her sex, possessed the tenacity of purpose and the resolution of a man. Obviously, as she could not conquer the sentiment, it was her nature to indulge it.
“I have a message to Licinius,” said she, turning at the same time from the mirror, and suffering her long brown hair to fall over her face like a veil; “a message that I do not care to write, lest it should be seen by other eyes. Tell me, Myrrhina, how can I best convey it to my kinsman?”
The waiting-maid was far too astute to suggest the obvious arrangement of a private interview, than which nothing could have been easier, or to offer her own services, as an emissary who had already proved herself trustworthy in many a well-conducted intrigue; for Myrrhina knew her business too well to hesitate in playing into the hands of her mistress. So she assumed a look of perplexity and deep reflection while, finger on forehead, as the result of profound thought, she made the following reply—