until his whole face seemed almost distorted with an
expression of passionate wrath.

Menecreta, paralysed by this sudden and final shattering of her every
hope, uttered moan after moan of pain, and as the pitiful sounds reached
the praefect's ears, a smothered oath escaped his tightly clenched
teeth. Like some gigantic beast roused from noonday sleep, he
straightened his massive frame and seemed suddenly to shake himself
free from that state of torpor into which Dea Flavia's unexpected
appearance had at first thrown him. He too, advanced to the foot of the
catasta and there faced the imperious beauty, whom the whole city had,
for the past two years, tacitly agreed to obey in all things.

"The State," he said, speaking at least as haughtily as Dea Flavia
herself, "hath agreed to accept the sum of twenty aurei for this slave.
'Tis too late now to make further bids for her."

But a pair of large blue eyes, cold as the waters of the Tiber and like
unto them mysterious and elusive, were turned fully on the speaker.

"Too late didst thou say, oh Taurus Antinor?" said Dea Flavia raising
her pencilled eyebrows with a slight expression of scorn, "nay! I had
not seen the hammer descend! The girl until then is not sold, and open
to the highest bidder. Or am I wrong, O praefect, in thus interpreting
the laws of Rome?"

"This is an exceptional case, Augusta," he retorted curtly.

"Then wilt thou expound to me that law which deals with such exceptional
cases?" she rejoined with the same ill-concealed tone of gentle irony.
"I had never heard of it; so I pray thee enlighten mine ignorance. Of a
truth thou must know the law, since thou didst swear before the altar of
the gods to uphold it with all thy might."

"'Tis not a case of law, Augusta, but one of pity."

The praefect, feeling no doubt the weakness of any argument which aimed
at coercing this daughter of the Caesars, prompted too by his innate
respect of the law which he administered, thought it best to retreat
from his position of haughty arrogance and to make an appeal, since
obviously he could not command. Dea Flavia was quick to note this
change of attitude, and her delicate lips parted in a contemptuous
smile.

"Dost administer pity as well as law, O Taurus Antinor?" she asked
coldly.

Then, as if further argument from him were of no interest to her, she
once more turned to the auctioneer, and said with marked impatience:

"I have bid thirty aurei for this girl