defend himself.
Defence of this villa was impossible even against the smallest body of
soldiers, but within the walls, raised and fortified by Venantius, a
long siege might be safely sustained.

'It is true,' said Aurelia at length, as if rousing herself from her
abstraction, 'that we must think of safety. But you are not yet wedded.'

'A few days hence I shall be.'

'Have you forgotten,' she resumed, meeting his resolute smile, 'what
still divides you from Veranilda?'

'You mean the difference of religion. Tell me, did that stand in the
way of your marriage with a Goth?'

She cast down her eyes and was silent.

'Was your marriage,' Basil went on, 'blessed by a Catholic or by an
Arian presbyter?'

'By neither,' replied Aurelia gently.

'Then why may it not be so with me and Veranilda? And so it shall be,
lady cousin,' he added cheerily. 'Our good Decius will be gone; we
await the sailing of the ship; but you and Marcian, and perhaps
Venantius, will be our witnesses.'

For the validity of Christian wedlock no religious rite was necessary:
the sufficient, the one indispensable, condition was mutual consent.
The Church favoured a union which had been sanctified by the oblation
and the blessing, but no ecclesiastical law imposed this ceremony. As
in the days of the old religion, a man wedded his bride by putting the
ring upon her finger and delivering her dowry in a written document,
before chosen witnesses. Aurelia knew that even as this marriage had
satisfied her, so would it suffice to Veranilda, whom a rapturous love
made careless of doctrinal differences: She perceived, moreover, that
Basil was in no mood for religious discussion; there was little hope
that he would consent to postpone his marriage on such an account; yet
to convert Basil to 'heresy' was a fine revenge she would not willingly
forego, her own bias to Arianism being stronger than ever since the
wrong she believed herself to have suffered at the hands of the deacon,
and the insult cast at her by her long-hated aunt. After years of
bitterness, her triumph seemed assured. It was much to have inherited
from her father, to have expelled Petronilla; but the marriage of Basil
with a Goth, his renunciation of Catholicism, and with it the Imperial
cause, were greater things, and together with their attainment she
foredreamt the greatest of all, Totila's complete conquest of Italy.
She saw herself mistress in the Anician palace at Rome, commanding vast