ve out
no sound? By the gods! they were close enough to do so."

"Catiline!" he exclaimed, starting back in astonishment, and half
expecting to feel a dagger in his bosom.

"Tush! tush! young man--think you the walls in the house of Catiline have
no ears, nor eyes? Paullus Arvina, I know all!"

"All?" faltered the youth, now utterly aghast.

"Ay, all!" replied the conspirator, with a harsh triumphant laugh. "Lucia
has given herself to you; and you have sold yourself to Catiline! By all
the fiends of Hades, better it were for you, rash boy, that you had ne'er
been born, than now to fail me!"

Arvina, trembling with the deep consciousness of hospitality betrayed, and
feeling the first stings of remorse already, stood thunderstricken, and
unable to articulate.

"Speak!" thundered Catiline; "speak! art thou not mine--mine soul and
body--sworn to be mine forever?"

Alas! the fatal oath, sworn in the heat of passion, flashed on his soul,
and he answered humbly, and in a faint low voice, how different from his
wonted tones of high and manly confidence--

"I am sworn, Catiline!"

"See then that thou be not forsworn. Little thou dream'st yet, unto what
thou art sworn, or unto whom; but know this, that hell itself, with all
its furies, would fall short of the tortures that await the traitor!"

"I am, at least, no traitor!"

"No! traitor! Ha!" cried Catiline, "is it an honest deed to creep into the
bosom of a daughter of the house which entertained thee as a friend!--No!
Traitor--ha! ha! ha! thou shalt ere long learn better--ha! ha! ha!"

And he laughed with the fearful sneering mirth, which was never excited in
his breast, but by things perilous and terrible and hateful. In a moment,
however, he repressed his merriment, and added--

"Give me that poniard thou didst wear this morning. It is mine."

"Thine!" cried the unhappy youth, starting back, as if he had received a
blow; "thine, Catiline!"

"Aye!" he replied, in a hoarse voice, looking into the very eyes of Paul.
"I am the slayer of the slave, and regret only that I slew him without
torture. Know you whose slave he was, by any chance?"

"He was the Consul's slave," answered Arvina, almost mechanically--for he
was utterly bewildered by all that had passed--"Medon, my freedman
Thrasea's cousin."

"The Consul's, ha!--which Consul's? speak! fool! speak, ere I tear it from
your throat; Cicero's, ha?"

"Cicero's, Catiline!"

"Here is a coil; and knows he of