"The mastering grief for the death of his wife."
Stephania fell to musing.
"Benilo," she spoke after a time, "has his own ends in view—not yours. Trust him not!"
Crescentius felt a strange misgiving as he remembered his late discourse with the Chamberlain, and the latter's suggestion, the primary cause of his visit to Stephania's apartments.
"I fear you mistrust him needlessly," he said after a pause. "Benilo's friendship for the emperor is but the mantle, under which he conceals the lever that shall raise the Latin world."
Stephania gazed absently into space.
"As I lay dreaming in the evening light, looking out upon the city, which you should rule, by reason of your name, by reason of your descent,—of a truth, I did marvel at your patience."
A laugh of bitter scorn broke from the Senator's lips.
"Can the living derive force and energy from a past, that is forgotten? Rome does not want tragedies! It wants to be danced to, sung to and amused. Anything to make the rabble forget their own abasement. 'Panem et Circenses' has been for ever their cry."
"Yet ours is a glorious race! Of a blood which has flowed untarnished in the veins of our ancestors for centuries. It has been our proud boast, that not a drop of the mongrel blood of foreign invaders ever tainted our own. It is not for the Roman rabble I grieve,—it is for ourselves."