“It is no jest—she has been conveyed hence. She is not in your house.”
Without another word, Lamia flew into the portion of the house to which Domitia had retired.
There all was in confusion. The female slaves were either struck down with terror, or crying out that they were not to blame.
“Where is she?” asked Lamia, hardly realizing that there was actual loss, thinking this was some frolic of his young companions, who on such occasions allowed themselves great licence.
To add to the confusion, a tame magpie with clipped wing, belonging to the gouty old Lamia, got in the way of every one, and screamed when run over; and the elder man roared out reproach and brandished his crutch when the life of his pet was endangered.
Claudia, like a pious woman, had rushed to the lararium to supplicate the assistance of the Gods, especially of Lamius, son of Hercules and Omphale, the reputed half-divine ancestor of the family.
Domitia had disappeared.—How?—none could say. She had been spirited away, one said in this manner, another said in that. One held it as his opinion that she had been carried off by some disbanded Vitellian soldiers who were said to lurk about the suburbs of Rome and commit depredations. Some thought that in maiden shyness she had fled home; some whispered that the Gods had translated her; others that a former lover had suborned the servants to admit him, and that he had conveyed her from her husband’s house to his own.
But in what direction had she been taken? There again opinions differed, and tongues gave conflicting accounts. One had seen a litter hurried down the Clivus Scauri. One declared that he had seen a girl running in the direction of Nero’s lake, and suggested that this was Domitia who had gone thither to destroy herself. One had noticed suspicious-looking men wrapped in military cloaks lounging about, and these had disappeared—he had even seen the backs of some near the Porta Metrovia. Then one cried out:—
“What else can be expected when such an ill-omened bird is kept in the house, as a magpie?”
Not until all guests, visitors, had been excluded from the house, could anything be learned with certainty, and that was little. During the afternoon, shortly before the arrival of the procession, several male and female slaves had arrived under the direction of a Chaldæan soothsayer, who announced that he had been sent along with them to the house of the bridegroom by the bride’s mother, the Lady Duilia, and that they formed a portion of Domitia’s attendance, who had been associated with her in her former home, and would be about her person in her new quarters. No suspicion had been roused, and as the Magian spoke with authority, and gave directions, which it was presumed he was commissioned to do, and as old Lamia was crippled with gout and moreover indisposed to attend to such matters, and the old lady was simple to childishness, these strangers were suffered to do much what they pleased; and on the bride retiring to be divested of the flame colored veil, her wreath and other ornaments, had been allowed to take possession of her.