."

The girl bowed and retired; but in a minute or two returned, accompanied
by a dark-eyed Ionian, bearing a Tuscan flask of the choice wine, and a
goblet of crystal, embossed with emeralds and sapphires, imbedded, by a
process known to the ancients but now lost, in the transparent glass.

A lyre of tortoiseshell was in the hands of AEgle, and a golden plectrum
with which to strike its chords; she had cast loose her abundant tresses
of dark hair, and decked her brows with a coronal of myrtle mixed with
roses, and as she came bounding with sinuous and graceful gestures through
the door, waving her white arms with the dazzling instruments aloft, she
might have represented well a young priestess of the Cyprian queen, or the
light Muse of amorous song.

The other girl filled out a goblet of the amber-coloured wine, the
fragrance of which overpowered, for a moment, as it mantled on the
goblet's brim, the aromatic perfumes which loaded the atmosphere of the
apartment.

And Fulvia raised it to her lips, and sipped it slowly, and delightedly,
suffering it to glide drop by drop between her rosy lips, to linger on her
pleased palate, luxuriating in its soft richness, and dwelling long and
rapturously on its flavour.

After a little while, the goblet was exhausted, a warmer hue came into her
velvet cheeks, a brighter spark danced in her azure eyes, and as she
motioned the Ionian slave-girl to replenish the cup and place it on the
tripod at her elbow, she murmured in a low languid tone,

"Sing to me, now--sing to me, AEgle."

And in obedience to her word the lovely girl bent her fair form over the
lute, and, after a wild prelude full of strange thrilling melodies, poured
out a voice as liquid and as clear, aye! and as soft, withal, as the
nightingale's, in a soft Sapphic love-strain full of the glorious poetry
of her own lovely language.

Where in umbrageous shadow of the greenwood
Buds the gay primrose i' the balmy spring time;
Where never silent, Philomel, the wildest
Minstrel of ether,

Pours her high notes, and caroling, delighted
In the cool sun-proof canopy of the ilex
Hung with ivy green or a bloomy dog-rose
Idly redundant,

Charms the fierce noon with melody; in the moonbeam
Where the coy Dryads trip it unmolested
All the night long, to merry dithyrambics
Blissfully timing

Their rapid steps, which