have seen your face before!" Marius said suddenly, awaking to a
consciousness of the fact. Nicanor answered nothing. The two eyed one
another in silence, neither yielding an inch, the Roman coldly haughty,
the slave always watchful.

"Hast ever held communication with the Lady Varia?" Marius asked.

"I have served her," Nicanor answered.

Marius laughed, looking him up and down as though he had been a horse
put up for sale.

"So I begin to think!" he muttered. "After what fashion, dog?"

Nicanor's eyes blazed beneath their shaggy brows; his brown hands
clenched in fury.

"As a servant should," he said harshly.

Again Marius laughed.

"So! That drew blood, did it? What has passed between you? Have you, you
base-born clod, dared draw her attention to you, and she a noble's
daughter? Speak, you fool, if you would not die the death!"

Nicanor raised his head slowly and looked his questioner in the eyes, a
defiance as direct as insolent bravado could make it. Marius's thin lips
drew tighter.

"You refuse to answer, do you? Do you know that for this you will be
broken on the rack at the lifting of my finger? And if you refuse to
speak, this shall be done before another day is past. You have a chance
now which you will not have again, to deny or to confess. And it is not
every one who would give it!"

"My lord hath not questioned me. To no other am I accountable," said
Nicanor.

Marius grunted scornfully.

"You fool! Do you think your silence can save you? I'll have the story
from Lady Varia; how may she withhold it? Her own lips shall seal your
guilt, as already they have convicted you."

This was true. Nicanor knew it, but he did not flinch. All that was left
to him was to die game, and this he knew also.

Marius all at once wearied of his examination.

"Be off with you!" he ordered insolently. "I'll have you cringing yet
before I am through with you."

Nicanor turned on his heel, with no obeisance such as a slave should
make, and strode out of the room. Marius gave a short, angry laugh.

"The brute will not whine! By all the Furies, he's worth the breaking.
Now, methinks, I have my scornful lady where I want her--and my lord as
well. This slave may be a weapon worth the having, since my foot is on
his neck also. We shall soon see!"

IV

That night Eudemius and his younger guest supped alone, with but one
slave to wait upon them. Marius, never prone to speech, kept his own
counsel as to the even