us rose in
alarm from his seat.

'She must see with those eyes!' muttered he.

'Who is here! Speak, in heaven's name! Ah, if you were blind like me,
you would be less cruel,' said she; and she again burst into tears.

'Take her away,' said Burbo, impatiently; 'I hate these whimperings.'

'Come!' said Stratonice, pushing the poor child by the shoulders. Nydia
drew herself aside, with an air to which resolution gave dignity.

'Hear me,' she said; 'I have served you faithfully--I who was brought
up--Ah! my mother, my poor mother! didst thou dream I should come to
this?' She dashed the tear from her eyes, and proceeded: 'Command me in
aught else, and I will obey; but I tell you now, hard, stern, inexorable
as you are--I tell you that I will go there no more; or, if I am forced
there, that I will implore the mercy of the praetor himself--I have said
it. Hear me, ye gods, I swear!'

The hag's eyes glowed with fire; she seized the child by the hair with
one hand, and raised on high the other--that formidable right hand, the
least blow of which seemed capable to crush the frail and delicate form
that trembled in her grasp. That thought itself appeared to strike her,
for she suspended the blow, changed her purpose, and dragging Nydia to
the wall, seized from a hook a rope, often, alas! applied to a similar
purpose, and the next moment the shrill, the agonized shrieks of the
blind girl, rang piercingly through the house.

Chapter III

GLAUCUS MAKES A PURCHASE THAT AFTERWARDS COSTS HIM DEAR.

'HOLLA, my brave fellows!' said Lepidus, stooping his head as he entered
the low doorway of the house of Burbo. 'We have come to see which of
you most honors your lanista.' The gladiators rose from the table in
respect to three gallants known to be among the gayest and richest
youths of Pompeii, and whose voices were therefore the dispensers of
amphitheatrical reputation.

'What fine animals!' said Clodius to Glaucus: 'worthy to be gladiators!'

'It is a pity they are not warriors,' returned Glaucus.

A singular thing it was to see the dainty and fastidious Lepidus, whom
in a banquet a ray of daylight seemed to blind--whom in the bath a
breeze of air seemed to blast--in whom Nature seemed twisted and
perverted from every natural impulse, and curdled into one dubious thing
of effeminacy and art--a singular thing was it to see this Lepidus, now
all eagerness, and energy, and life, patting the vast shoulders of the
gladia