is not right to condemn without a
trial."

"You take your friend's part!" exclaimed Balbilla. "I would not tell a
lie for my own brother."

"You know how to give your words the aspect of an honorable meaning in
serious matters, as he does in jest."

"You are angry and unaccustomed to bridle your tongue," replied the
architect. "Pollux, I repeat it, did not perpetrate the caricature, but a
sculptor from Rome."

"Which of them? I know them all."

"I may not name him."

"There--you see.--Come away Claudia."

"Stay," said Pontius, decisively. "If you were any one but yourself, I
would let you go at once in your anger, and with the double charge on
your conscience of doing an injustice to two well-meaning men. But as you
are the granddaughter of Claudius Balbillus, I feel it to be due to
myself to say, that if Pollux had really made this monstrous bust he
would not be in this palace now, for I should have turned him out and
thrown the horrid object after him. You look surprised--you do not know
who I am that can address you so."

"Yes, yes," cried Balbilla, much mollified, for she felt assured that the
man who stood before her, as unflinching as if he were cast in bronze,
and with an earnest frown, was speaking the truth, and that he must have
some right to speak to her with such unwonted decision. "Yes indeed, you
are the principal architect of the city; Titianus, from whom we have
heard of you, has told us great things of you; but how am I to account
for your special interest in me?"

"It is my duty to serve you--if necessary, even with my life."

"You," said Balbilla, puzzled. "But I never saw you till yesterday."

"And yet you may freely dispose of all that I have and am, for my
grandfather was your grandfather's slave."

"I did not know"--said Balbilla, with increasing confusion.

"Is it possible that your noble grandfather's instructor, the venerable
Sophinus, is altogether forgotten. Sophinus, whom your grandfather freed,
and who continued to teach your father also."

"Certainly not--of course not," cried Balbilla. "He must have been a
splendid man, and very learned besides."

"He was my father's father," said Pontius.

"Then you belong to our family," exclaimed Balbilla, offering him a
friendly hand.

"I thank you for those words," answered Pontius. "Now, once more, Pollux
had nothing to do with that image."

"Take my cloak, Claudia," said the girl. "I will sit again to the young
man."

"No