No; Fabiola returned home, exhausted almost by the preceding day and night, and the sad scenes of the morning, and retired to her own apartment, no longer perhaps even a philosopher, yet not a Christian. She desired all her servants to keep away from the court which she occupied, that she might not be disturbed by the smallest noise; and she forbade any one to have access to her. There she sat in loneliness and silence, for several hours, too excited to obtain rest from slumber. She mourned long over Agnes, as a mother might over a child suddenly carried off. Yet, was there not a tinge of light upon the cloud that overshadowed her, more than when it hung over her father’s bier? Did it not seem to her an insult to reason, an outrage to humanity, to think that she had perished; that she had been permitted to walk forward in her bright robe, and with her smiling countenance, and with her joyous, simple heart, straight on—into nothing; that she had been allured by conscience, and justice, and purity, and truth, on, on, till with arms outstretched to embrace them, she stepped over a precipice, beneath which yawned annihilation? No. Agnes, she felt sure, was happy somehow, somewhere; or justice was a senseless word.
“How strange,” she further thought, “that every one whom I have known endowed with superior excellence, men like Sebastian, women like Agnes, should turn out to have belonged to the scorned race of Christians! One only remains, and to-morrow I will interrogate her.”
When she turned from these, and looked round upon the heathen world, Fulvius, Tertullus, the Emperor, Calpurnius,—nay, she shuddered as she surprised herself on the point of mentioning her own father’s name—it sickened her to see the contrast of baseness with nobleness, vice with virtue, stupidity with wisdom, and the sensual with the spiritual. Her mind was thus being shaped into a mould, which some form of practical excellence must be found to fill, or it must be broken; her soul was craving as a parched soil, which heaven must send its waters to refresh, or it must become an eternal desert.
Agnes, surely, well deserved the glory of gaining, by her death, her kinswoman’s conversion; but was there not one, more humble, who had established a prior claim? One who had given up freedom, and offered life, for this unselfish gain?
While Fabiola was alone and desolate, she was disturbed by the entrance of a stranger, introduced under the ominous title of “A messenger from the emperor.” The porter had at first denied him admittance; but upon being assured that he bore an important embassy from the sovereign, he felt obliged to inquire from the steward what to do; when he was informed that no one with such a claim could be refused entrance.
Fabiola was amazed, and her displeasure was somewhat mitigated, by the ridiculous appearance of the person deputed in such a solemn character. It was Corvinus, who with clownish grace approached her, and in a studied speech, evidently got up very floridly, and intrusted to a bad memory, laid at her feet an imperial rescript, and his own sincere affection, the Lady Agnes’s estates, and his clumsy hand. Fabiola could not at all comprehend the connection between the two combined presents, and never imagined that the one was a bribe for the other. So she desired him to return her humble thanks to the emperor for his gracious act; adding, “Say that I am too ill to-day to present myself, and do him homage.”
“But these estates, you are aware, were forfeited and confiscated,” he gasped out in great confusion, “and my father has obtained them for you.”
“That was unnecessary,” said Fabiola, “for they were settled on me long ago, and became mine the moment”—she faltered, and after a strong effort at self-mastery, she continued—“the moment they ceased to be another’s; they did not fall under confiscation.”
Corvinus was dumb-foundered: at last he stumbled into something, meant for an humble petition to be admitted as an aspirant after her hand, but understood by Fabiola to be a demand of recompense, for procuring or bringing so important a document. She assured him that every claim he might have on her should be fully and honorably considered at a more favorable moment; but as she was exceedingly wearied and unwell, she must beg him to leave her at present. He did so quite elated, fancying that he had secured his prize.
After he was gone she hardly looked at the parchment, which he had left open on a small table by her couch, but sat musing on the sorrowful scenes she had witnessed, till it wanted about an hour to sunset. Sometimes her reveries turned to one point, sometimes to another of the late events; and, at last, she was dwelling on her being confronted with Fulvius, that morning, in the Forum. Her memory vividly replaced the entire scene before her, and her mind gradually worked itself into a state of painful excitement, which she at length checked by saying aloud to herself: “Thank heaven! I shall never behold that villain’s face again.”