something else to say. The essenced fop wishes to seduce Zoe from me."

"Impossible! You misconstrue the ordinary gallantries which he is in the
habit of paying to every handsome face."

"Curse on his ordinary gallantries, and his verses, and his compliments,
and his sprigs of myrtle! If Caesar should dare--by Hercules, I will
tear him to pieces in the middle of the Forum."

"Trust his destruction to me. We must use his talents and
influence--thrust him upon every danger--make him our instrument while
we are contending--our peace-offering to the Senate if we fail--our
first victim if we succeed."

"Hark! what noise was that?"

"Somebody in the terrace--lend me your dagger."

Catiline rushed to the window. Zoe was standing in the shade. He stepped
out. She darted into the room--passed like a flash of lightning by the
startled Cethegus--flew down the stairs--through the court--through
the vestibule--through the street. Steps, voices, lights, came fast and
confusedly behind her; but with the speed of love and terror she gained
upon her pursuers. She fled through the wilderness of unknown and dusky
streets, till she found herself, breathless and exhausted, in the midst
of a crowd of gallants, who, with chaplets on their heads and torches in
their hands, were reeling from the portico of a stately mansion.

The foremost of the throng was a youth whose slender figure and
beautiful countenance seemed hardly consistent with his sex. But the
feminine delicacy of his features rendered more frightful the mingled
sensuality and ferocity of their expression. The libertine audacity of
his stare, and the grotesque foppery of his apparel, seemed to indicate
at least a partial insanity. Flinging one arm round Zoe, and tearing
away her veil with the other, he disclosed to the gaze of his thronging
companions the regular features and large dark eyes which characterise
Athenian beauty.

"Clodius has all the luck to-night," cried Ligarius.

"Not so, by Hercules," said Marcus Coelius; "the girl is fairly our
common prize: we will fling dice for her. The Venus (Venus was the Roman
term for the highest throw of the dice.) throw, as it ought to do, shall
decide."

"Let me go--let me go, for Heaven's sake," cried Zoe, struggling with
Clodius.

"What a charming Greek accent she has! Come into the house, my little
Athenian nightingale."

"Oh! what will become of me? If you have mothers--if you have sisters"--

"Clodius has a siste