This simple and innocent request was made in an excited manner. Gannon’s face wore a frightened look. Misunderstanding his true feelings, and thinking that he was diffident on account of their difference in rank, Livilla tried to calm him by reassuring words. Again she put out her hand and drew him near her; but her sensuous kiss was given on Gannon’s cheek, for he had turned his head. Angered at his indifference and at her defeat, she hastily took up a stylus and wrote a reply.
“Begone!” she ordered, as she handed it to him.
In embarrassed silence Gannon took the letter, and bowed himself from the room. He breathed more freely as he walked down the path that led to the street. “What did she mean?” he asked himself. “The daughter of Antonia in love with a schoolmaster’s son!” Gannon thought he must have been dreaming. “Surely she was angry when she handed me the letter,” he continued. “What wrong have I committed?” He thought of what had happened, but recalled nothing for which he could reproach himself. A feeling of shame possessed him, like that which he felt when he first heard a coarse story in the camp. His face grew stern. Looking at the letter which had been so roughly handed him, he was astonished to find it unsealed. Never before had Livilla failed to seal her letters. His first impulse was to return, but he could not go back just then. He decided that an unsealed letter must be one of little importance, and he proceeded towards the camp.
As he lightly walked along, he began to wonder what could be the import of the frequent communications that passed between Livilla and Sejanus. Here was an opportunity to satisfy his curiosity. The desire to read Livilla’s reply began to possess him. He checked it by his stern sense of honor. But the probability that Livilla might have written about his forwardness in kissing her hand stimulated his curiosity. He decided to look inside, even if he did not read the words.
He quickly opened the letter and glanced inside. As quickly he closed it; but the swiftness of his motion did not prevent him from reading the words, “Lygdus is a good man to do the deed. Come and see me.” New thoughts now rushed through his mind. At last he had learned a secret, a thing against which his father had always warned him. He would have liked to tear the words from his mind, but they were as indelibly fixed there as if carved in stone. Lygdus, the leering eunuch, whom Gannon knew and despised, was to commit a secret deed,—perhaps a crime. Gannon trembled. So uncertain was the condition of his mind that he dared not return immediately to the camp. He went instead to the Forum of Augustus. Before the beautiful statues of the great Roman generals and heroes in the shadow of the wonderful temple of Mars, he became calmer.
But questions shrouded in mystery still presented themselves to him. “Why had Livilla chosen the wicked Lygdus to do some dark deed? Were Sejanus and Livilla lovers? Did their letters contain a plan to rid them of a hateful rival?” he asked himself. In the camp he remembered to have heard the soldiers say that one day Drusus struck Sejanus in the face. Sejanus, he had been told, had never forgotten that insult. But after carefully weighing the perplexing questions, Gannon decided that carrying letters was his duty, no matter what they contained. Still he wished he had left Livilla’s reply unread. When he reached the camp and handed her letter to Sejanus, he had regained his usual composure.
“Where is the seal?” immediately demanded Sejanus.
“It was not sealed, my lord,” Gannon replied, with nervous haste.
“Hast thou read the letter?” he imperiously asked.
“Nay, my lord.”