aic paving of the apartment.
The walls were painted half yellow, half red, after the manner of Magna
Grascia, while around them were ranged the statues of the Manlian
nobles. The roof was supported in the Tuscan fashion by four beams
crossing each other at right angles, and including between them the
open space above the fountain.

It was the old man who spoke first.

"Do not think, my Lucius, but that I see the justice of your prayer, or
that I wish otherwise than that Marcia should wind wool about your
doorposts. Still there is much to be said for delay. Surely these
days are not auspicious ones for marriages, and surely better will
come. You have my pledge, as had my dead friend Marcus Marcius in the
matter of her name. Do you think it was nothing for me to call a
daughter other than Manlia--and for a plebeian house at that? Yet she
is Marcia. Doubt not that I will keep this word as well."

"Aye, but, father," persisted Sergius, "is it not something that she
should be mine to protect in time of peril?"

"And who so able to protect as Lucius," put in Caius, with an admiring
glance, for Caius Torquatus was six years younger than his friend, and
admired him with all the devotion of a younger man.

"Has it come that our house cannot protect its women?" cried the elder
Torquatus. "What more shameful than that our daughter should be
carried thus across a Sergian threshold--going like a slave to her
master!" He spoke proudly and sternly. Then, turning to Sergius, he
went on more gently: "Were you to remain in the city, my son, there
might be more force in what you claim; but you will go out with one of
the new legions that they will doubtless raise, and you will believe an
old man who says that it is not well for a soldier in the field to have
a young wife at home."

Sergius flushed and was silent, lest his answer should savour of pride
or disrespect toward an elder.

Suddenly they became conscious of a commotion in the street. Shrill
cries were borne to their ears, and, a moment later, blows fell upon
the outer door, followed by the grinding noise as it turned upon its
pivots. A freedman burst into the atrium.

Titus Torquatus rose from his seat, and half raised his staff as if to
punish the unceremonious intrusion. Then he noted the excitement under
which the man seemed to be labouring, and stood stern and silent to
learn what news could warrant such a breach of decorum.

"It is Maharbal, they say-