“Try me,” answered he, and for one moment the man’s nature was changed, and he felt capable of devotion, self-[pg 177]sacrifice, fidelity, all that constitutes the heroism of love. The next, nature reasserted her sway, and he was counting the cost.
“I have a fancy for your barbarian,” said Valeria carelessly, after a pause. “Myrrhina loves him, and—and if you will give him to me I will take him into my household.”
Placidus shot a piercing glance at the waiting-maid, and that well-tutored damsel cast down her eyes and tried to blush. There was something, too, in Valeria’s manner that did not satisfy him, and yet he was willing to believe more than he hoped, and nearly all he wished.
“I seldom ask for anything,” resumed Valeria, raising her head with a proud petulant gesture of which she knew the full effect. “It is far easier for me to grant a favour than to implore one. And yet, I know not why, but I do not feel it painful to beg anything to-day from you!”
A soft smile broke over the haughty face while she spoke, and she raised her eyes and looked full into his for an instant, ere she lowered them to toy with the bracelet once more. It was the deadliest thrust she had in all her cunning of fence, the antagonist could seldom parry or withstand it; would it foil him in their present encounter? He loved her as much as such a nature can love, but the question was one of life and death, and it was no time for child’s play now, as Esca was in possession of a secret that might annihilate his lord in an hour. The tribune was not a man to sacrifice his very existence for a woman, even though that woman was Valeria. He hesitated, and she, marking his hesitation, turned pale, and shook with rage.
“You refuse me!” said she, in accents that trembled either with suppressed fury or lacerated feelings. “You refuse me. You, the only man living for whom I would have so lowered myself. The only man I ever stooped to entreat. Oh! it is too much, too much.”
She bowed her head in her hands, and as the wealth of brown hair showered over her white shoulders, they heaved as if she wept. Myrrhina looked reproachfully at the tribune, and muttered, “Oh! if he knew, if he only knew!”
In his dealings with the other sex Placidus had always been of opinion that it is better to untie a knot than to cut it.
“Fair Valeria,” said he, “ask me anything but this. I am pledged to slay this man within twenty-four hours; will not that content you?”
The exigency of the situation, the danger of him for whom she had conceived so wild and foolish a passion, sharpened her powers of deception, and made her reckless of [pg 178]her own feelings, her own degradation. Shaking the hair back from her temples, beautiful in her disorder and her tears, she looked with wet eyes in the tribune’s face, while she replied—