re yet
speaking; but now I am sure of it. I will not vex you at this time with
questions, but will devour my anxiety and grief. But to-morrow, to-morrow,
Paullus, if you love me indeed, you will tell me all that disturbs you.
True love has no concealment from true love. Do not, I pray you, answer
me; but fare you well, and good fortunes follow you."

CHAPTER IX.

THE AMBUSH.

My friends,
That is not so. Sir, we are your enemies.
TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA.

It was already near the fourth hour of the Roman night, or about a quarter
past eight of our time, when Paullus issued from the Capuan gate, in order
to keep his appointment with the conspirator; and bold as he was, and
fearless under ordinary circumstances, it would be useless to deny that
his heart beat fast and anxiously under his steel cuirass, as he strode
rapidly along the Appian way to the place of meeting.

The sun had long since set, and the moon, which was in her last quarter,
had not as yet risen; so that, although the skies were perfectly clear and
cloudless, there was but little light by which to direct his foot-steps
toward the valley of the Muses, had he not been already familiar with the
way.

Stepping out rapidly, for he was fearful now of being too late at the
place appointed, he soon passed the two branches of the beautiful and
sparkling Almo, wherein the priests of Cybele were wont to lave the statue
of their goddess, amid the din of brazen instruments and sacred song; and
a little further on, arrived at the cross-road where the way to Ardea, in
the Latin country, branched off to the right hand from the great Appian
turnpike.

At this point there was a small temple sacred to Bacchus, and a little
grove of elms and plane trees overrun with vines, on which the ripe
clusters consecrated to the God were hanging yet, though the season of the
vintage had elapsed, safe from the hand of passenger or truant school-boy.

Turning around the angle of this building, Arvina entered a dim lane,
overshadowed by the tall trees of the grove, which wound over two or three
little hillocks, and then sweeping downward to the three kindred
streamlets, which form the sources of the Almo, followed their right bank
up the valley of the Muses.

Had the mind of Arvina been less agitated than it was by dark and ominous
forebodings, that walk had been a pleasant one, in the calm and breezeless
evening. The stars were