“You will not be angry if I give all my thoughts and words and looks to my father now. When we come on shore, he will be swallowed up by others.”
Lamia stepped back.
“Do not be offended,” she said with a smile, and the loveliest, most bewitching dimples came into her cheeks. “I have not indeed been without thought of you, Lucius, but have spun and spun and weaved too, enough to make you a tunic, all with my own hands, and a purple clavus—it nigh ruined me, the dyed Tyrian wool cost[1]—I will not say; but I wove little crossed L’s into the texture.”
“What,” said Corbulo. “For Lucius and Longina?”
The girl became crimson.
Lamia came to her succor. “That could not be,” said he, “for Longina and Lucius are never across, but alack! Lucius is often so with Lamia, when he has done some stupid thing and he sees a frown on his all but father’s face, but hears no word of reproach.”
“My boy,” said Corbulo, “when a man knows his own faults, then a reprimand is unnecessary, and what is unnecessary is wrong.”
Lamia bowed and retired.
And now again father and daughter were alone together in the prow observing the arc of the harbor in which the ship was gliding smoothly.
And now the sailors had out their poles and hooks, and they ran the vessel beside the wharf, and cast out ropes that were made fast to bronze rings in the marble breasting of the quay.