did his own thoughts
afflict, so terribly did her strong words oppress him.

"But it is over--it is over now!" She exclaimed exultingly. "His reign of
wickedness is over! The tool, which he moulded for his own purposes, shall
be the instrument to quell him. The pitfall which he would have digged in
the way of others, shall be to them a door whereby they shall escape his
treason, and his ruin. You are saved, my Arvina! By all the Gods! you are
saved! And, if it lost me once, it has preserved me now--my wild,
unchangeable, and undying love for you, alone of men! For it has made me
think! Has quenched the insane flames that burned within me! Has given me
new views, new principles, new hopes! Evil no more shall be my good, nor
infamy my pride! If, myself, I am most unhappy, I will live henceforth,
while I do live, to make others happy! I will live henceforth for two
things--revenge and retribution! By all the Gods! Julia and you, my
Paullus, shall be happy! By all the Gods! he who destroyed me for his
pleasure, shall be destroyed in turn, for mine!"

"Lucia! think! think! he is your father!"

"Perish the monster! I have not--never had father, or home, or----Speak not
to me; speak not of him, or I shall lose what poor remains of reason his
vile plots have left me. Perish!--by all the powers of hell, he shall
perish, miserably!--miserably! And you, you, Paullus, must be the weapon
that shall strike him!"

"Never the weapon in a daughter's hand to strike a father," answered
Paullus, "no! though he were himself a parricide!"

"He is!--he is a parricide!--the parricide of Rome itself!--the murderer of
our common mother!--the sacrilegious stabber of his holy country! Hear me,
and tremble! It lacks now two days of the Consular election. If Catiline
go not down ere that day cometh, then Rome goes down, on that day, and
forever?"

"You are mad, girl, to say so."

"You are mad, youth, if you discredit me. Do not I know? am not I the
sharer? the tempter to the guilt myself? and am not I the mistress of its
secrets? Was it not for this, that I gave myself to you? was it not unto
this that I bound you by the oath, which now I restore to you? was it not
by this, that I would have held you my minion and my paramour? And is it
not to reveal this, that I now have come? I tell you, I discovered, how he
would yesternight have slain you by the gladiator's sword; discovered how
he now would slay you, by the perverted sword of Justice, a