Below was the sombre lake, almost circular, with the rolling woods of oak and beech flowing down the slopes to the very water’s edge, here and there the green covering interrupted by precipitous crags of tuffa. Yonder was the great ridge on which gleamed white the Temple of Jupiter Latiaris, the central shrine of the Latin races, the great pilgrimage place to which the country people turned in every distress.
She had not previously seen the Alban Lake, although Gabii had been her residence for some months, and that was seated on a low spur of the mountains, in the crater of one of which slept this tranquil and lovely sheet of water. But she knew enough about it by hearsay to be sure that she was not misinformed by the slaves as to where she now was. She certainly was beside that lake, near which once stretched Alba Longa, the cradle of the Roman race—a race of shepherds driven from its first seat by volcanic fires, to settle beside the Tiber on the Palatine Hill.
That road along which she had been conveyed during the night was the great Appian Way. It could have been none other, and that led, as she was aware, along the spurs of the Alban mountains.
She walked the terrace, her brow moist with anxious thought.
Why had she been carried off?
By whom had she been swept as by a hurricane from her husband’s side?
A sense of numbness was on her brain still, caused by the shock. To Lucius Lamia her heart had turned with the reverence she had borne to her father, with the sweetness and glow of girlish love for one who would be linked with her by a still nearer tie. She could not realize that she was parted from Lamia finally, irrevocably. She was in a waking dream: a dream of great horror, but yet a dream that would roll away and reality would return. She would wake from it in the arms of her dear husband, looking into his eyes, clinging to his heart, hearing his words soothing her mind, allaying her terrors.
If at this time she could have conceived that to be possible which nevertheless was to take place, she would have run to the lake and plunged into its blue waters.
Singularly enough no thought of the vision in the temple of Isis recurred to her. Possibly she was in too stunned a condition of mind; possibly the effects of the narcotic still hung about her, like the vapors that trail along the landscape after a storm of rain at the break of the weather. No thought of hers connected this outrage with Domitian. This was due to the impression produced in her by conversation with her mother, who, she believed, was designing to secure Domitian for herself.
Moreover, the young prince had never shown her any favor. He had studiously neglected her, that he might address himself to Duilia. He had taunted her, sneered at her, but never spoken to her words that might be construed as a declaration of love. She recalled how she had urged her mother to expel him from the house when he sought refuge there; how she had sought to thrust him forth to certain death, to deny him the rights of hospitality. Such was enough to provoke resentment, not to awaken love. Her mother, on the other hand, had bound him to her by the tie of gratitude, for she had saved him at that time of extreme peril.