nto--'

Here the senator suddenly paused; for the eyes of the girl, which had
hitherto been fixed on him with the same expression of blank dismay
that had characterised them from the first, slowly moved in the
direction of the door. The instant afterwards a slight noise caught
Vetranio's ear, and Antonina shuddered so violently as he pressed her
to his side that he felt it through his whole frame. Slowly and
unwillingly he withdrew his gaze from the pale yet lovely countenance
on which it had been fixed, and looked up.

At the open door, pale, silent, motionless, stood the master of the
house.

Incapable, from the confusion of his ideas, of any other feeling than
the animal instinct of self-defence, Vetranio no sooner beheld
Numerian's figure than he rose, and drawing a small dagger from his
bosom, attempted to advance on the intruder. He found himself,
however, restrained by Antonina, who had fallen on her knees before
him, and grasped his robe with a strength which seemed utterly
incompatible with the slenderness of her form and the feebleness of her
sex and age.

The first voice that broke the silence which ensued was Numerian's. He
advanced, his face ghastly with anguish, his lip quivering with
suppressed emotions, to the senator's side, and addressed him thus:--

'Put up your weapon; I come but to ask a favour at your hands.'

Vetranio mechanically obeyed him. There was something in the stern
calmness, frightful at such a moment, of the Christian's manner that
awed him in spite of himself.

'The favour I would petition for,' continued Numerian, in low, steady,
bitter tones, 'is that you would remove your harlot there, to your own
abode. Here are no singing-boys, no banqueting-halls, no perfumed
couches. The retreat of a solitary old man is no place for such an one
as she. I beseech you, remove her to a more congenial home. She is
well fitted for her trade; her mother was a harlot before her!'

He laughed scornfully, and pointed, as he spoke, to the figure of the
unhappy girl kneeling with outstretched arms at his feet.

'Father, father!' she cried, in accents bereft of their native softness
and melody, 'have you forgotten me?'

'I know you not!' he replied, thrusting her from him. 'Return to his
bosom; you shall never more be pressed to mine. Go to his palace; my
house is yours no longer! You are his harlot, not my daughter! I
command you--go!'

As he advanced towards her with fierce glan