If Hyphax had been on his native soil, and had trodden suddenly on a hooded asp or a scorpion’s nest, he could not have started more. The thought of being so near a Christian,—to him who worshipped every abomination, believed every absurdity, practised every lewdness, committed any atrocity!
Maximian proceeded, and Hyphax kept time to every member of his sentences by a nod, and what he meant to be a smile;—it was hardly an earthly one.
“You will take Sebastian to your quarters; and early to-morrow morning,—not this evening, mind, for I know that by this time of day you are all drunk,—but to-morrow morning, when your hands are steady, you will tie him to a tree in the grove of Adonis, and you will slowly shoot him to death. Slowly, mind; none of your fine shots straight through the heart or the brain, but plenty of arrows, till he die exhausted by pain and loss of blood. Do you understand me? Then take him off at once. And mind, silence; or else——”
A Monogram of Christ, found in the Catacombs.
CHAPTER XXV.
THE RESCUE.
Sebastian a Christian! she said to herself; the noblest, purest, wisest of Rome’s nobility a member of that vile, stupid sect? Impossible! Yet, the fact seems certain. Have I, then, been deceived? Was he not that which he seemed? Was he a mean impostor, who affected virtue, but was secretly a libertine? Impossible, too! Yes, this was indeed impossible! She had certain proofs of it. He knew that he might have had her hand and fortune for the asking, and he had acted most generously and most delicately towards her. He was what he seemed, that she was sure—not gilded, but gold.
Then how account for this phenomenon, of a Christian being all that was good, virtuous, amiable?