be once more among the trees. I redoubled my
efforts. I played with the utmost expression the most pathetic parts
of the melody. As if under the influence of a charm, she began to
advance towards me, now hesitating, now moving back a few steps, now
approaching, half-reluctantly, half willingly, until, utterly
vanquished by the long trembling close of the last cadence of the air,
she ran suddenly up to me, and falling at my feet, raised her hands as
if to implore my pardon.'

'Truly this was no common tribute to your skill! Did she speak to you?'

'She uttered not a word,' continued Vetranio. 'Her large soft eyes,
bright with tears, looked piteously up in my face; her delicate lips
trembled, as if she wished to speak, but dared not; her smooth round
arms were the very perfection of beauty. Child as she seemed in years
and emotions, she looked a woman in loveliness and form. For the
moment I was too much astonished by the suddenness of her supplicating
action to move or speak. As soon as I recovered myself I attempted to
fondle and console her, but she shrunk from my embrace, and seemed
inclined to escape from me again; until I touched once more the strings
of the lute, and then she uttered a subdued exclamation of delight,
nestled close up to me, and looked into my face with such a strange
expression of mingled adoration and rapture, that I declare to you,
Julia, I felt as bashful before her as a boy.'

'You bashful! The Senator Vetranio bashful!' exclaimed Julia, looking
up with an expression of the most unfeigned incredulity and
astonishment.

'The lute,' pursued Vetranio gravely, without heeding the interruption,
'was my sole means of procuring any communication with her. If I
ceased playing, we were as strangers; if I resumed, we were as friends.
So, subduing the notes of the instrument while she spoke to me in a
soft tremulous musical voice, I still continued to play. By this plan
I discovered at our first interview that she was the daughter of one
Numerian, that she was on the point of completing her fourteenth year,
and that she was called Antonina. I had only succeeded in gaining this
mere outline of her story, when, as if struck by some sudden
apprehension, she tore herself from me with a look of the utmost
terror, and entreating me not to follow her if I ever desired to see
her again, she disappeared rapidly among the trees.'

'More and more wonderful! And, in your new character of a bashful