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"Now nobody has any hesitation about feeling that you are all a Vestal should be, a priestess whose prayers are certain to be heard and answered." Brinnaria made a wry face. "My prayers were not heard yesterday," she sighed. "Almo was not killed. I was praying hard to have him dead and have it all over with and done with forever." Lutorius turned on her a slow, benignant, indulgent smile.
Commodus, prompted by Lutorius, droned through the required questions and showed manifest relief when he pronounced the word "Beloved" and the second ceremony was over. He was, however, not wholly a loutish and unmannerly Emperor, but could be tactful and gracious when his interest was aroused.
"Our idea," said Lutorius, "was to arrange that Truttidius be present with a number of horse-hair sieves, practically with his whole stock of his best, and that one of those be chosen before the whole College of Pontiffs, perhaps by your Majesty, perhaps by some one of the altar-boys, blindfolded, if you like that idea, or in any other manner which seems good to you."
Except twice, in the presence of Aurelius, I haven't been within speaking distance of him in twenty-two years. Between the fact that no one can prove that I have had anything to do with him and the improbability that anyone would suspect me of interest in any other man, let alone misconduct with any other man, I feel entirely secure." Lutorius wagged his head.
"See Commodus first of all," said Lutorius. In the short interval since her former audience, those traits of which he had previously shown the merest traces had rapidly developed in Commodus into fixed characteristics. He had become what he remained until his end, an odd mingling of loutish, peevish school-boy, easy-going, self-indulgent athlete and superstitious, suspicious despot.
All you can say of the innocence of your intimacy with Vocco, all you can say of the innocence of your regard for Almo, all I can say of my Father's high esteem of you, of his injunctions regarding you, will not avail to save you. The Pontiffs will not heed the considerations which were so plain to Father and are so plain to me and Lutorius and Numisia.
I have talked with Lutorius and Causidiena and Numisia. They feel towards you as my Father felt. They believe in you and in your worthiness as a priestess, and they minimize your irregularities. I sent for Flexinna and talked with her. She deserves consideration, if only because she is the mother of the largest family to be found among our nobility, even among our gentry.
Besides you, your two friends, your agents, Lutorius and myself, no one knows that Almo was ever King of the Grove. I had him brought to the Palace and Lucro and I had no end of good fun fencing with him. I had the Senate pass a decree relieving him of all and sundry legal consequences of having been sold as a slave in Britain.
In this new mood she confided in Lutorius. The good man was horrified. "And I never suspected anything wrong!" he exclaimed. "At least you have been outwardly collected. Nobody has suspected anything. But this is terrible. A Vestal should menace no man's life, should not desire any man's death. Far from it, her heart should be clean of hate, malice or envy."
I shall never marry anybody. I shall die a Vestal." "You feel that way now, of course," Lutorius agreed, "but you will get over it, though you do not think so now." "I do not believe I shall ever get over it," Brinnaria declared. "So many things rankle in my thoughts, the small things even more than what is more important.
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