hat the secret service had
learned that you had arranged for a fishing-vessel to take you to sea from
Sipontum. They had then set three detachments of Praetorians to intercept
you, one on each road, with watchers to warn them if you were recognized.
You were seen or betrayed somewhere between Hadria and Auximum, one
account said at Ortona, and the Praetorians killed you.

"Tanno said that the secret service always gave out such an account if
they failed to locate and capture any man they should have arrested. But
the confirmation of the story by three different private agencies plainly
destroyed his hopes that you might still be alive. I tried to keep on
hoping, but, after a whole year, I stopped lying awake and sobbing in the
dark; while I felt more grief for you than I ever felt for Satronius
Patavinus and more truly widowed than when he died, I ceased to grieve and
regained my interest in gaieties and suitors. Don't you think that was
natural?"

"Very natural," I admitted and went on with my story.

The moon rose higher and its rays no longer struck on our faces, but,
striking through the open panel, diffused from what part of the cushion or
sides of the coach they fell on directly, lit up the whole interior with a
pearly glimmer. By this subdued light Vedia looked bewitchingly charming
and coquettish, all the more because of the contrast between her elaborate
coiffure and the simple costume her maid had worn.

I ate liberally and with relish and she appeared to enjoy her food as I
did.

"You don't seem a bit worried," I remarked, "over the loss of your
jewels."

"Loss!" she exclaimed. "I haven't lost them, they are all in the secret
compartment under us inside the coach body, just where Lydia put them
before we left Rome. The bandits had barely begun to ransack the coach
when we heard the yells of the constabulary and then the hoof-beats of
their horses. 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. They were preparing to torture the procurator
to make him reveal the hiding place of his bullion, when the yelling and
galloping horsemen scared them away."

I congratulated her and we ate wi