"Well?"

"Or did you expect to find the fair Roxana with the prefect's wife?"

"Roxana?" asked Verus, with a cunning smile. "Roxana! Why she was the
wife of Alexander the Great, and is long since dead, but I care only for
the living, and when I left the merry tumult in the streets it was simply
and solely--"

"You excite my curiosity."

"Because my prophetic heart promised me, fairest Balbilla, that I should
find you here."

"And that you call honest!" cried the poetess, hitting the praetor a blow
with the stick of the ostrich-feather fan she held in her hand. "Only
listen, Lucilla, your husband declares he came here for my sake." The
praetor looked reproachfully at the speaker, but she whispered:

"Due punishment for a dishonest man." Then, raising her voice, she said:

"Do you know, Lucilla, that if I remain unmarried, your husband is not
wholly innocent in the matter."

"Alas! yes, I was born too late for you," interrupted Verus, who knew
very well what the poetess was about to say.

"Nay--no misunderstanding!" cried Balbilla. "For how can a woman venture
upon wedlock when she cannot but fear the possibility of getting such a
husband as Verus."

"And what man," retorted the praetor, "would ever be so bold as to court
Balbilla, could he hear how cruelly she judges an innocent admirer of
beauty?"

"A husband ought not to admire beauty--only the one beauty who is his
wife."

"Ah Vestal maiden," laughed Verus. "I am meanwhile punishing you by
withholding from you a great secret which interests us all. No, no, I am
not going to tell--but I beg you my lady wife to take her to task, and
teach her to exercise some indulgence so that her future husband may not
have too hard a time of it."

"No woman can learn to be indulgent," replied Lucilla. "Still we practise
indulgence when we have no alternative, and the criminal requires us to
make allowance for him in this thing or the other."

Verus made his wife a bow and pressed his lips on her arm, then he asked.
"And where is dame Julia?"

"She is saving the sheep from the wolf," replied Balbilla.

"Which means--?"

"That as soon as you were announced she carried off little Roxana to a
place of safety."

"No, no," interrupted Lucilla. "The tailor was waiting in an inner room
to arrange the charming child's costume. Only look at the lovely nosegay
she brought to Julia. And do you deny my right to share your secret?"

"How could I?" replied Verus.

"He i