"You are quite too unimportant an enemy," said he to the young Greek, "to be worth arrest by the consuls, if indeed they know what part you have had in our escape. I know not what perils are before me, and I have no right to ask you to share them. You have long ago paid off any debt of gratitude that you owed me and mine when Fabia saved your life. I am your patron no longer; go, and live honourably, and you will find deposited with Flaccus a sum that will provide for all your needs. If ever I return to Rome, my party victorious, myself in favour, then let us renew our friendship; but till then you and I meet no more."
Agias knelt and kissed Drusus's robe in a semi-Oriental obeisance.
"And is there nothing," he asked half wistfully at the parting, "that I can yet do for you?"
"Nothing," said Drusus, "except to see that no harm come to my Aunt Fabia, and if it be possible deliver Cornelia from the clutches of her bloody uncle."
"Ah!" said Agias, smiling, "that is indeed something! But be not troubled, domine,"—he spoke as if Drusus was still his master,—"I will find a way."
That evening, under the canopy of night, the five Cæsarians sped, swift as their horses could bear them, on their way to Ravenna.
CHAPTER XVI
THE RUBICON
I
It was growing late, but the proconsul apparently was manifesting no impatience. All the afternoon he had been transacting the routine business of a provincial governor—listening to appeals to his judgment seat, signing requisitions for tax imposts, making out commissions, and giving undivided attention to a multitude of seeming trifles. Only Decimus Mamercus, the young centurion,—elder son of the veteran of Præneste,—who stood guard at the doorway of the public office of the prætorium, thought he could observe a hidden nervousness and a still more concealed petulance in his superior's manner that betokened anxiety and a desire to be done with the routine of the day. Finally the last litigant departed, the governor descended from the curule chair, the guard saluted as he passed out to his own private rooms, and soon, as the autumn darkness began to steal over the cantonment, nothing but the call of the sentries broke the calm of the advancing night.