"The Gods have given me a willing heart, Hortensia—and the strong will makes strong the feeble body."
"Well spoken, youth. Your devotion shall lose you nothing, believe me. Come, Julia, let us go and array us for the journey. The nights are cold now, in December, and the passes of the Algidus are bleak and gusty."
The ladies left the room; and, before the hour, which Davus had required, was spent, they were seated together in the rich carpentum, well wrapped in the soft many-colored woollen fabrics, which supplied the place of furs among the Romans—it being considered a relic of barbarism, to wear the skins of beasts, until the love for this decoration again returned in the last centuries of the Empire.
Old Davus grasped the reins; two Thracian slaves, well mounted, and armed with the small circular targets and lances of their native land, gallopped before the carriage,[pg 84] accompanied by the slave who had brought the message, while four more similarly equipped brought up the rear; and thus, before the moon had arisen, travelling at a rapid pace, they cleared the cultivated country, and were involved in the wild passes of Mount Algidus.
Scarcely, however, had they wound out of sight, when gallopping at mad and reckless speed, down a wild wood-road on the northern side of the villa, there came a horseman bestriding a white courser, of rare symmetry and action, now almost black with sweat, and envelopped with foam-flakes.
The rider was the same singular-looking dark-complexioned boy, who had overheard the exclamation of Aulus Fulvius, concerning young Arvina, uttered at the head of the street Argiletum.
His body was bent over the rude saddle-bow with weariness, and he reeled to and fro, as if he would have fallen from his horse, when he pulled up at the door of the villa.
"I would speak," he said in a faint and faltering voice, "presently, with Hortensia—matters of life and death depend on it."
"The Gods avert the omen!" cried the woman, to whom he had addressed himself, "Hortensia hath gone but now to Rome, with young Julia, on the arrival of a message from Arvina."
"Too late! too late!"—cried the boy, beating his breast with both hands. "They are betrayed to death or dishonor!"