looked on Taurus
Antinor as a kind of personal fetish who kept the wrath of the gods
averted from his imperial head. Be that as it may, there is no doubt
that tyrant exerted his utmost power to keep Taurus near his person,
showering upon him those honours and titles of which he would have been
equally ready to deprive him had the stranger at any time run counter to
his will. Anon, when the Caesar thought it incumbent upon his dignity to
start on a military expedition, he forced Antinor to accept the
praefecture of the city in order to keep him permanently settled in
Rome.

The Anglicanus accepted the power--which was almost supreme in the
absence of the Caesar. He even gave the oath demanded of him by the
Emperor that he would remain at his post until the termination of the
proposed military expedition, but it was easy to see that the dignities
for which others would have fought and striven to their uttermost were
not really to the liking of Taurus Antinor.

Avowedly wilful of temper, he had since his return from Syria become
even more silent, more self-centred than before. Many called him morose
and voted him either treacherous or secretly ambitious; others averred
that he was either very arrogant or frankly dull. Certain it is that he
held himself very much aloof from the society of his kind and
persistently refused to mix with the young elegants of the day either in
their circles or their baths, their private parties or public
entertainments.

Thus it was that the praefect found himself to-day for the first time
in the near presence of Dea Flavia, the acknowledged queen of that same
society which he declined to frequent, and as he grudgingly admitted to
himself that she was beautiful beyond what men had said of her, he
remembered all the tales which he had heard of her callous pride, her
cold dignity, and of that cruel disdain with which she rejected all
homage and broke the hearts of those whom her beauty had brought to her
feet.

For the moment, however, she struck him as more pathetic than fearsome;
she looked lonely just now like a stately lily blooming alone in a
deserted garden. 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.

Ther