ithout escort. Take, therefore--'

'I have the armor bearer for my escort, father.'

'It is something, but not enough,' said the centurion. 'Enough for
safety, but not for dignity. Remember that, while on the one hand you
are the wife of the imperator Sergius Vanno, you are also a daughter of
the house of Porthenus--a family which was powerful in the far-off days
of the republic, long before the house of Vanno had begun to take root,'
he continued, in a tone of pride. For then, as now, poverty consoled
itself for its privations by dreams--whether well or ill founded, it
mattered but little--of grandeurs which had once existed; and it was one
of the weaknesses of the centurion to affect superiority of blood, and
try to believe that therein he enjoyed compensations beyond anything
that wealth could bestow.

'Of the house of Porthenus,' he repeated, 'and should therefore be
suitably attended. So let this new slave follow behind. And take, also,
the dwarf. He is not of soldierly appearance, but for all that he will
count as one more.'

Fearful of offending her father by a refusal, or of encountering
additional risks of recognition by a more prolonged conversation at the
doorway, now brightened by the light of the newly risen moon, AEnone
hastily assented, and started upon her homeward route. Clinging closely
to the side of her bondwoman, not daring to look back for a parting
adieu to her father, who stood at the door leaning upon his sword, and
grimly smiling with delight at fancying his child at last attended as
became a scion of the house of Porthenus--not regarding the
half-smothered oaths and exclamations of contempt with which the armor
bearer behind her surveyed his two new companions upon guard--she
pressed rapidly on, with the sole desire of reaching her house and
secluding herself from further danger of recognition.

The moon rose higher, silvering the city with charms of new beauty,
gleaming upon the surface of the swift-rolling Tiber, giving fresh
radiance to the marble palaces and temples, adding effect to whatever
was already beautiful, diminishing the deformity of whatever was
unlovely, even imparting a pleasant aspect of cheerfulness to the lower
quarters of the city, where lay congregated poverty and dishonor and
crime. The Appian Way no longer swarmed with the crowd that had trodden
it an hour ago. The priests had completed the sacrifice and left the
temple, the bathers had departed, the slaves no long