“Yes,” answered the other wiseacre, “she’s far too young and pretty to stay unwedded very long. Aphrodite didn’t make her to sit as an old maid carding wool and munching beans. One can see Hermippus’s and Lysistra’s purpose with half an eye.”
“Cleopis, Nania, what is this vile tattling that I hear?”
The young mistress’s eyes blazed fury. Nania turned pale. Hermione was quite capable of giving her a sound whipping, but Cleopis mustered a bold front and a ready lie:
“Ei! dear little lady, don’t flash up so! I was only talking with Nania about how Phryne the scullion maid was making eyes at Scylax the groom.”
“I heard you quite otherwise,” was the nigh tremulous answer. But Hermione was not anxious to push matters to an issue. From the moment of Glaucon’s downfall she had believed—what even her own mother had mildly derided—that Democrates had been the author of her husband’s ruin. And now that the intent of her parents ever more clearly dawned on her, she was close upon despair. Hermippus, however,—whatever his purpose,—was considerate, nay kindly. He regarded Hermione’s feelings as pardonable, if not laudable. He would wait for time to soothe her. But the consciousness that her father purposed such a fate for her, however far postponed, was enough to double all the unanswered longing, the unstilled pain.
Glaucon was gone. And with him gone, could Hermione’s sun ever rise again? Could she hope, across the end of the æons, to clasp hands even in the dim House of Hades with her glorious husband? If there was chance thereof, dark Hades would grow bright as Olympus. How gladly she would fare out to the shade land, when Hermes led down his troops of helpless dead.
“Downward, down the long dark pathway,
Past Oceanus’s great streams,
Past the White Rock, past the Sun’s gates
Downward to the land of Dreams: