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.

"Mother!" echoed Nola, striving to smother her terror as she threw
herself on her knees.

"The woman is dead," said the praefect quietly.

CHAPTER VI

"I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and
the last."--REVELATIONS XXII. 13.

And after that silence and peace.

Silence save for the moanings of the child Nola, who in a passionate
outburst of grief had thrown herself on the body of her mother.

Dea Flavia stood there still and calm, her young face scarce less white
than the clinging folds of her tunic, her unfathomable eyes fixed upon
the pathetic group at her feet: the weeping girl and the dead woman.

She seemed almost dazed--like one who does not understand and a quaint
puzzled frown appeared upon the whiteness of her brow.

Once she raised her eyes to the praefect and encountered his
gaze--strangely contemptuous and wrathful--fixed upon her own, and anon
she shuddered when a pitiable moan from Nola echoed from end to end
along the marble walls around.

And the crowd of idlers began slowly to disperse. In groups of twos and
threes they went, their sandalled feet making a soft rustling noise
against the flagstones of the Forum, and their cloaks of thin woollen
stuff floating out behind them as they walked.

The young patricians were the first to go. The scene had ceased to be
amusing and Dea Flavia was not like to bestow another smile. They
thought it best to retire to their luxurious homes, for they vaguely
resented the majesty of death which clung round the dead freedwoman and
the young living slave. They hoped to forget in the course of the
noonday sleep, and the subsequent delights of the table, the painful
events which had so unpleasantly stirred their shallow hearts.

Dea Flavia paid no heed to them as they murmured words of leave-taking
in her ear. 'Tis doubtful if she saw one of them or cared if they went
or stayed.

At an order from the praefect the auction sale was abruptly suspended.
The lictors drove the herds of human cattle together preparatory to
taking them to their quarters on the slopes of the Aventine whe