Domitia did not go into the house, as desired, to receive Lamia.
She was well aware that he would come to her into the garden, if she did not present herself within, and she preferred to speak with him away from her mother.
She therefore continued to walk under the vines. She looked up at the sunlight filtering through the broad green flaky shade, with here and there a ray kissing a purple, pendent bunch of grapes.
Then she looked at the dreaming peacock, the sun flashing on its metallic plumage.
No! matter was not evil. Matter, indeed, without life was not even like the statue—for that was a copy of what lived, and failed just in this, that it fell short of life. Domitia felt as though she were touching the edge of a great verity, but had not set her foot upon it. Then she considered what Euphrosyne had said to her, and she to her slave. Wherever the path of duty lay, there violets bloomed and verbena scented the air. Was not life itself, devoid of the knowledge of its purport, and its obligations and its destiny, like matter uninformed by Life? Or if any life entered into it, it was the disintegrating life of decay and decomposition?
She, for her part, had no obligations laid on her. If, however, she were married to Lamia, then at once duties would spring up, and her way would be rosy. Till then her happiness hung in suspense, like that of her mother, during the period of widowhood in which she was expected and required to live in retirement. Out of society, not elbowing and shouldering her way forward—that was a year of blank and of unhappiness to Longa Duilia, in which she found no consolation save in badgering her steward, and in scheming for the future.
Lamia, as Domitia expected he would, came to her under the trellis, and she received him with that dimple in her cheek which gave her expression so much sweetness mingled with pathos,
“Lucius,” she said, “you are good to come. My mother is, oh! so dull, and restless withal.”
“It is well that she should be away from Rome, my Domitia. I have told her as much. On no account must you leave Gabii. Rome is boiling over, and will scald many fingers. None know who will be up to-morrow, and which down. Galba is dead, almost torn to pieces by those who worshipped him yesterday. Otho is proclaimed by the Senate. Yet there is fresh trouble brewing and threats sound from the provinces. Methinks every general at the head of an army is marching upon Rome to snatch the purple for his own shoulders. Otho has but a poor chance. He can command the prætorians and the household troops—none others. Soldiers that have disbanded themselves and gangs of robbers prowl the streets, waylay men of substance and plunder them, break into houses and strip them of their contents. Murders are frequent. Thus far your palace in the Carinæ is undisturbed.”
“Oh, Lucius! my mother has so fretted over that house, as it stands back, and makes no show behind its bank of yews and laurels, and yet those evergreens, I believe, saved it in the fire. She says that the house is unworthy of our dignity.”