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"What dost prate about?" he asked, still speaking roughly for he was wroth with her and hated to see the gaping crowd of young, empty-headed fools congregating round him and this persistent suppliant hanging round his shins. "Thy child? who's thy child? And what hath thy child to do with me?" "She is but a babe, my lord," said Menecreta with timid, tender voice; "her age only sixteen.
She bent to Menecreta and called her by name, her mellow voice vibrating with tender tones like the chords of the harp that are touched by a master hand, and her blue eyes, veiled with tears, looked down with infinite tenderness on the prostrate figure at her feet. "Menecreta," she said gently, "thy sorrow hath made thee harsh.
She had not attempted to interrupt the frenzied woman who called this awful curse upon her; only once, when Menecreta invoked the gods, did a shudder pass through the delicate body, and her heavy lids fell over her blue eyes, as if they were trying to shut out some awful vision which the woman's ravings had conjured up.
She would have blessed Menecreta and Menecreta was dead; she would have given her life for the Cæsar and the Cæsar was a cowardly fugitive, and now on her knees she had sued for pity, and the heart which she had fought for to possess had turned from her as if it knew neither mercy nor love, and whilst her very soul had cried with longing she had found a deaf ear turned to her cry.
He was wroth with her for what she had done to Menecreta and for her childish caprice and opposition to his will, but at the same time he who so seldom felt pity for those whom a just punishment had overtaken, was sorry for this young girl, for in her case retribution had been severe and out of all proportion to her fault.
Had he yielded he would have despised himself even as this proud girl now affected to scorn him. He interposed his massive figure between Dea Flavia and the slave and said loudly: "By thy leave, Nola, the daughter of Menecreta, is the property of the State and 'tis I will decide whither she goeth now."
"Aye! in the midst of a garden, with roses and violets all around." "And happiness?" sighed Menecreta. And her head fell back against Dea Flavia's arm; her eyes, now veiled by the film of death gazed, sightless, up at the dome of blue. "Menecreta!" cried Dea Flavia, horror-stricken as she felt the feeble body stiffening against her with the approaching rigidity of death.
And a sense of sadness had crept into her heart as he thus spoke, for memory had conjured up before her mind the miseries which had followed in her wake these few days past. "I have brought naught but misery," she said with a sigh, "to those whom I would bless." "Joy to me, Augusta," he rejoined earnestly, "since the day I first beheld thee." "Menecreta is dead," she whispered; "dost remember?"
The praefect himself, mayhap, would bid for her, or the imperator's agents! alas! everything seemed possible to the anxious, the ridiculous, the sublime heart of the doting mother, and when that living mass of golden ripples glimmered in the noonday sun, Menecreta forgetting her timidity, her fears, her weakness pushed her way through the crowd with all the strength of her despair, and with a cry of agonised entreaty, threw herself at the feet of the praefect of Rome.
In matters of sentiment they were not cruel and they held family ties in great esteem; both these factors went far towards causing any would-be purchaser to obey Taurus Antinor's commands and to retire at once from the bidding. As for Menecreta, it seemed to her as if the heavens had opened before her delighted gaze.
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