"Timid dog, why did you let her escape?"

"Dominus," whimpered the menial, "why did you let her escape?"

"Insolence!" cried Gabinius, seizing a staff, and beating first one, then the other, of his servants indiscriminately; and so he continued to vent his vexation, until Fabia's litter was well inside the Porta Capena.

II

Fabia had thus escaped from the clutches of Gabinius, and the latter was sullen and foiled. But none the less the Vestal was in a tremor of fear for the consequences of her meeting with the libertine. She knew that Gabinius was determined, dexterous, and indefatigable; that he was baffled, but not necessarily driven to throw over his illicit quest. And Fabia realized keenly that going as she had unattended into a strange house, and remaining there some time with no friendly eye to bear witness to her actions, would count terribly against her, if Gabinius was driven to bay. She dared not, as she would gladly have done, appear before the pontifices and demand of them that they mete out due punishment on Gabinius for grossly insulting the sanctity of a Vestal. Her hope was that Gabinius would realize that he could not incriminate her without ruining himself, and that he had been so thoroughly terrified on reflection as to what might be the consequences to himself, if he tried to follow the intrigue, that he would prudently drop it. These considerations hardly served to lighten the gloom which had fallen across Fabia's life. It was not so much the personal peril that saddened her. All her life she had heard the ugly din of the world's wickedness pass harmlessly over her head, like a storm dashing at the doors of some secluded dwelling that shielded its inhabitants from the tempest. But now she had come personally face to face with the demon of impurity; she had felt the fetid touch almost upon herself; and it hurt, it sickened her. Therefore it was that the other Vestals marvelled, asking what change had come over their companion, to quench the mild sunshine of her life; and Fabia held little Livia very long and very closely in her arms, as if it were a solace to feel near her an innocent little thing "unspotted of the world."

All this had happened a very few days before the breathless Agias came to inform Fabia of the plot against her nephew. Perhaps, as with Cornelia, the fact that one near and dear was in peril aided to make the consciousness of her own unhappiness less keen. None could question Fabia's resolute energy. She sent Agias on his way, then hurried off in her litter in quest of Caius Marcellus, the consul. Æmilius Paulus, the other consul, was a nonentity, not worth appealing to, since he had virtually abdicated office upon selling his neutrality to Cæsar. But Marcellus gave her little comfort. She broke in upon the noble lord, while he was participating in a drunken garden-party in the Gardens of Lucullus. The consul—hardly sober enough to talk coherently—had declared that it was impossible to start any troops that day to Præneste. "To-morrow, when he had time, he would consider the matter." And Fabia realized that the engine of government would be very slow to set in motion in favour of a marked Cæsarian.

But she had another recourse, and hastened her litter down one of the quieter streets of the Subura, where was the modest house occupied by Julius Cæsar before he became Pontifex Maximus. This building was now used by the Cæsarian leaders as a sort of party headquarters. Fabia boldly ordered the porter to summon before her Curio—whom she was sure was in the house. Much marvelling at the visit of a Vestal, the slave obeyed, and in a few moments that tribune was in her presence.

Caius Scribonius Curio was probably a very typical man of his age. He was personally of voluptuous habits, fearfully extravagant, endowed with very few scruples and a very weak sense of right and wrong. But he was clear-headed, energetic, a good orator, a clever reasoner, an astute handler of men, courageous, versatile, full of recourse, and on the whole above the commission of any really glaring moral infraction. He was now in his early prime, and he came before Fabia as a man tall, athletic, deep-chested, deep-voiced, with a regular profile, a clear, dark complexion, curly hair carefully dressed, freshly shaven, and in perfect toilet. It was a pleasure, in short, to come in contact with such a vigorous, aggressive personality, be the dark corners of his life what they might.

Curio yielded to no man in his love of Lucrine oysters and good Cæcuban wine. But he had been spending little time on the dining couch that evening. In fact he had at that moment in his hand a set of tablets on which he had been writing.

"Salve! Domina!" was his greeting, "what unusual honour is this which brings the most noble Vestal to the trysting spot of us poor Populares."