“Yes, if you please,” was all she could find to say.
“Come then,” said the boy, smiling again pleasantly, but paying no heed to Godmother.
Betty turned to her, puzzled and uncertain, but Godmother only laughed.
“Don’t trouble about finding me again. It will be all right. Go with him, and stay as long as you like. You’ll discover it’s not so long as you imagine.”
Thus encouraged, Betty very willingly followed her guide. He was a handsome boy, dressed very much as the Roman nobleman on the bridge had been clothed, except that the cloak he wore over his tunic had a broad purple band round its edge. That, as she afterwards learnt from Godmother, being the usual dress for Roman boys, for it was not till they were grown up, that they wore the tunic without this purple border.
“That is our villa,” he began presently when they came in sight of a long one-storied house surrounded by trees and shrubs. “My father has much land here, and many farms.”
“Will you tell me your name?” asked Betty shyly.
“My name is Lucius.... I will take you first straight through the house,” said the boy. By this time they had reached its entrance, and Betty caught a beautiful vision of rooms divided by pillars, each one opening into the next; of painted ceilings and walls, of coloured stone pavements, of couches with purple silk cushions upon them, and pedestals upon which statues stood. It was only a flashing glimpse she had of all this, and though she saw everything with the greatest distinctness, she was somehow conscious that none of it was actually real; that even Lucius was not really alive, even while she saw him as plainly as though he had been flesh and blood. Deep down in her mind, she knew that everything she saw and heard, was what had once existed but was over and done with long, long ago, and was only revived for a moment.
And yet everything looked so real. Just as this sad feeling came to her, she was walking over a pavement made of small coloured stones fitted together to make a pattern. This she knew was called mosaic work, and she noticed the design of it, which was that of a woman seated on the back of some animal in the centre of the pavement.
By the time she had walked through the villa and out of it upon a terrace overlooking the country, Betty had a confused idea of great luxury and beauty, displayed in a very different sort of house from any she had ever seen before.