"Permit me, now, to ask once more who you are, lady?" said Crispina. "I know well the names upon that list."
"My husband," replied the Greek widow, "was brother of the triumvir Lepidus."
"The triumvir was our master," answered the landlady; "and alas! it is too true that he, the triumvir, was timid and weak, and his son, about whose image you have asked me, knew not, poor youth, when he so bitterly blamed Augustus for sacrificing Tully to Mark Antony, that his own father had given up a brother—that brother whom you married—in the same terrible days, and just in the same kind of way."
"Whose bust, then, do you say is this which is so like my son?" asked Aglais.
"The bust of your son's first cousin, lady. My foster-son's father was your husband's brother."
"No wonder," cried Agatha, "that my brother should be like his own first cousin!"
"No," said Aglais; "but it is as surprising as it is fortunate that we should have come to this house, and have fallen among kind persons disposed to be friends, like our hostess, her good husband, and little Benigna yonder."
"There is nothing which my husband and I would not do," said Crispina, "for the welfare of all belonging to the great Æmilian family, in whose service we both were born and spent our childhood; the family which gave us our freedom in youth, and our launch in life as a married couple. As for me, you know now how I must feel when I look upon the face of your son."
A pause ensued, and then Aglais said,
"Your former master, the triumvir, wrote to my husband asking forgiveness for having consented to let his name appear in the list of the proscribed, and explaining how he got it erased. Therefore, let not that subject trouble you."