United States or Faroe Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It hasn't wings or feet! How came it here? Who's been here? Speak, speak, you fool, or I will teach you a lesson!" Agias gathered himself for a spring; for he expected to hear Sesostris whimper out a confession, and see Pratinas's wickedly handsome face peering into the chest. "He shan't cut my throat without a struggle!" was his vow.
"Then listen," went on the Ethiop; "I care for the dear more than anything else in the world. She said she was Pratinas's niece. It isn't true. She is a slave-girl he picked up when very little at Delos, as he told me, though I doubt it. He took a fancy to her, and really thought of adopting her.
When he reached Pratinas's tenement, Artemisia ran to meet him, and kissed him again and again, and cuddled down in his strong, young arms, quite content to believe that she had found a protector on whom she could cast all her burdens. And Agias? He laughed and bade her wipe away her tears, and swore a great oath that, so long as he breathed, Calatinus should not lay a finger upon her.
Agias, who was called into the council, was invaluable in information and suggestion. He said that Pothinus had acted at Pratinas's advice, when he took Fabia and Cornelia to the palace. The eunuch had expected to use them half as hostages, half as captives to be put to ransom.
That pretty creature had been basking in the sunshine of Agias's presence ever since coming on shipboard. It was tacitly understood that Cornelia would care for the welfare and education of Pratinas's runaway, until she reached a maturity at which Agias could assert his claims.
If Agias had been a trifle more reckless he would have cut short Pratinas's thread of life then and there, and greatly diminished the chance of unpleasant consequences. But he had not sunk so low as that. Besides, he had already worked out in his versatile head a plan that seemed practicable, albeit utterly audacious. Cornelia was at Baiæ.
Agias was catching glimpses of a little Olympus of his own an Olympus in which he was at once Zeus, Poseidon, and Apollo; Sesostris so he declared the lame cup-bearer Hephæstus; and in place of Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite, were the smiles and laughter of Artemisia. Agias was head over ears in love with this pretty little cage-bird shut up in Pratinas's gloomy suite of rooms.
Once when the latter was late in his daily visit, he was delighted to find scribbled on the wall, "Artemisia to her Agias: you are real mean." Agias hated to make her erase it lest it fall under Pratinas's eagle eye. But still Sesostris had nothing to tell about the plot against Drusus. Some days passed. Agias began to grow uneasy.
Will he take me? Pity! mercy! Pratinas!" But no one had paid her any more attention. It was Cæsar who had sprung from his seat. "Wretch!" and his terrible eyes burned into Pratinas's guilty breast, so that he writhed, and held down his head, and began to mutter words inaudible. "Can you tell the truth to save yourself the most horrible tortures human wit can devise?"
"Pisander," said Valeria, sharply, noting Pratinas's disquietude, "go out of the room. I don't need you at present." Pisander, unlike many contemporaries, was affected by a sensitive conscience. But if there was one man whom he despised to the bottom of his soul, it was Pratinas.
Word Of The Day