And the moist emblems of her pity flow
As heaven relented with the watery bow.”
Barret.
For many weary days did Lucia watch with fond fidelity the sick couch of her lover, breathing faithful and earnest prayers for his conversion and recovery. Though unconscious of her presence, her step and voice haunted him like a vision—as something known and loved in other days. Reason at length returned, the light was suffered once more to cheer his eyes, and looking up he beheld its beams shining upon the kneeling form of Lucia Claudia.
Her lover uttered her name, and that but once; words could not express his feelings; to him she seemed alive from the dead; his thought could it have found a voice had said, “God, thou art merciful to me a sinner.”
He gazed long and intensely upon his living, his beloved Lucia; a slight scar upon her throat, half hidden among the glittering tresses of sun-bright hair that shaded her lovely face and bosom, recalled her peril to his mind. How had she escaped the jealous fury of her husband? to what strange intervention of Providence did she owe her preservation? He looked from her to her brother, as if to ask him to narrate the particulars of her escape. Lucia guessed his meaning, and seating herself beside him commenced her tale.
“Adonijah, thou wouldest know the history of my wonderful preservation; listen and adore the mercy that saved me from the consequences of my unhappy husband’s posthumous jealousy. His strange behaviour during our brief interview—his passionate farewell, his abrupt departure, and the terrible import of his last words, filled me with apprehension. Some dark ambitious scheme was working in his brain, while the sounds of distant commotion in the camp denoted that Rome was again about to be plunged into a new revolution.
“There was no one within the house of whom I could ask counsel, for my faithful Cornelia was absent, engaged in her office of deaconess, and if present what arm short of Omnipotence could save me from the cruel love, or rather fierce jealousy, of Nymphidius Sabinus. I resumed my devotions and, in the words of the Psalmist of Israel, ‘gave myself unto prayer.’
“I was yet kneeling when Marcus abruptly entered the chamber with consternation and horror depicted on every stern feature. His looks, his bold intrusion on the privacy of a noble Roman lady, told at once his errand. He came, I knew, to slay me.
“Assuming courage I did not at that moment feel, I demanded the occasion of his coming; he briefly communicated the commands of his lord, and putting a dagger into my hand bade me fall by my own hand rather than by a less noble one.