pressive atmosphere of the subterranean retreat he had just
quitted, as to have left him nothing of his more refined nature. All
that was honourable or intellectual in his character had now completely
ceded to all that was base and animal. He looked round, and perceiving
that Ulpius had silently quitted him, softly closed the door. Then
advancing to the bedside with the utmost caution compatible with the
involuntary unsteadiness of an intoxicated man, he took the lamp from
the vase in which it was half concealed, and earnestly surveyed by its
light the figure of the sleeping girl.

The head of Antonina was thrown back and rested rather over than on her
pillow. Her light linen dress had become so disordered during the
night that it displayed her throat and part of her bosom, in all the
dawning beauties of their youthful formation, to the gaze of the
licentious Roman. One hand half supported her head, and was almost
entirely hidden in the locks of her long black hair, which had escaped
from the white cincture intended to confine it, and now streamed over
the pillow in dazzling contrast to the light bed-furniture around it.
The other hand held tightly clasped to her bosom the precious fragment
of her broken lute. The deep repose expressed in her position had not
thoroughly communicated itself to her face. Now and then her slightly
parted lips moved and trembled, and ever and anon a change, so faint
and fugitive that it was hardly perceptible, appeared in her
complexion, breathing on the soft olive that was its natural hue, the
light rosy flush which the emotions of the past night had impressed on
it ere she slept. Her position, in its voluptuous negligence, seemed
the very type of Oriental loveliness; while her face, calm and
sorrowful in its expression, displayed the more refined and sober
graces of the European model. And thus these two characteristics of
two different orders of beauty, appearing conjointly under one form,
produced a whole so various and yet so harmonious, so impressive and
yet so attractive, that the senator, as he bent over the couch, though
the warm, soft breath of the young girl played on his cheeks and waved
the tips of his perfumed locks, could hardly imagine that the scene
before him was more than a bright, delusive dream.

While Vetranio was yet absorbed in admiration of her charms, Antonina's
form slightly moved, as if agitated by the influence of a passing
dream. The change thus accom