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Within a very few days after my encounter with Vedia at Bambilio's dinner Falco and I had just ascended the stair of his residence after returning from a conference with Pullanius and his partners at which both sides had finally agreed on terms to the last detail and the contracts had been drawn up, executed, signed and sealed. He said: "Phorbas, I am pleased with you.
During the latter months of Bambilio's oversight Brinnaria had felt restive and as if some inward force was forever driving her to feverish activities; under the care of Lutorius she became placid and thought less of her stock-raising, journeys to and fro to her estates, talks with grooms and such like activitie and devoted herself with more cool ardor to her duties.
Under the mellow light shed by the numerous hanging lamps, against the intricate particolored patterns of the wall between the statue-niches, I saw the vacuous baby face of Asellia, Bambilio's pretty doll of a wife, between Vedia's countenance cleverly assuming a normal social expression after her brief glare at me, and Nemestronia's mask of horror, accentuated by the agony of the gripping spasm which throttled her, for the pain in her chest was induced by anything which startled her, and was not assumed.
I have branded on my memory for life the picture I saw as I entered the triclinium. Its wall decorations expressed old Bambilio's enthusiasm for Alexandrian art and literature. The ceiling was adorned with a copy of Apellides' Dance of the Loves; and the walls were decorated with copies of equally celebrated paintings by masters of similar fame.
The rascals were so sure of not being interfered with and so much at ease that they were startled frantic by the galloping horsemen and scuttled off with Bambilio's coin-chest, dragging him and poor Lydia and totally forgetting me, thinking me the maid, not even noticing these little trinkets, which are mostly silver and some of gold and so worth stealing.
A half-mile further, midway of a flat stretch of road, on one side of which was an expanse of swampy ground, varied with pools bordered by sedge, reeds and bushes, with areas of tussocks and with clumps of willows and alders, we came on Bambilio's and Vedia's carriages, their gilded decorative carvings, coral-red panel-bars, pearl-shell panel-panes, gilded rosette-bosses, silver-plated hubs and gilded spokes and fellies glittering in the late sunshine.
They and their horses made so much noise that the brigands thought they had to do with a hundred or more and fled, dragging off Bambilio and Lydia and leaving me and the hampers, even the wine-skins. They never were near laying hands on those jewels. They had Bambilio's coin-chests, to be sure; but not my jewelry nor so much as a nugget of the bullion they had expected.
While I was grinning at my thoughts and watching the advance of Bambilio's carriage, glancing back at intervals at the beast-train and the procurator's coach, I caught sight, on the highway behind Bambilio's carriage, of another travelling carriage of which I had descried no glimpse before, though I must have missed seeing it as it topped several hills further south.
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