to acknowledged by smiles and
blushes the gift of Glaucus.

'Yes,' replied the Athenian, carelessly toying with the gems; 'I am
choosing a present for Ione, but there are none worthy of her.'

He was startled as he spoke by an abrupt gesture of Nydia; she tore the
chain violently from her neck, and dashed it on the ground.

'How is this? What, Nydia, dost thou not like the bauble? art thou
offended?'

'You treat me ever as a slave and as a child,' replied the Thessalian,
with ill-suppressed sobs, and she turned hastily away to the opposite
corner of the garden.

Glaucus did not attempt to follow, or to soothe; he was offended; he
continued to examine the jewels and to comment on their fashion--to
object to this and to praise that, and finally to be talked by the
merchant into buying all; the safest plan for a lover, and a plan that
any one will do right to adopt, provided always that he can obtain an
Ione!

When he had completed his purchase and dismissed the jeweller, he
retired into his chamber, dressed, mounted his chariot, and went to
Ione. He thought no more of the blind girl, or her offence; he had
forgotten both the one and the other.

He spent the forenoon with his beautiful Neapolitan, repaired thence to
the baths, supped (if, as we have said before, we can justly so
translate the three o'clock coena of the Romans) alone, and abroad, for
Pompeii had its restaurateurs--and returning home to change his dress
ere he again repaired to the house of Ione, he passed the peristyle, but
with the absorbed reverie and absent eyes of a man in love, and did not
note the form of the poor blind girl, bending exactly in the same place
where he had left her. But though he saw her not, her ear recognized at
once the sound of his step. She had been counting the moments to his
return. He had scarcely entered his favorite chamber, which opened on
the peristyle, and seated himself musingly on his couch, when he felt
his robe timorously touched, and, turning, he beheld Nydia kneeling
before him, and holding up to him a handful of flowers--a gentle and
appropriate peace-offering--her eyes, darkly upheld to his own, streamed
with tears.

'I have offended thee,' said she, sobbing, 'and for the first time. I
would die rather than cause thee a moment's pain--say that thou wilt
forgive me. See! I have taken up the chain; I have put it on: I will
never part from it--it is thy gift.'

'My dear Nydia,' returned Glaucus, and r