“Whom do you wish me to spare? What is it, Valeria? Surely you are not still dwelling on that barbarian slave? What is he, to come between you and me? It is too late—too late!”
“Never! never!” she gasped out, seizing his hand in both her own, and folding it to her breast. “It is no time now for concealment; no time for choice phrases, and mock reserve, and false shame! I love him, Placidus! I love him!—do you hear? Grant me but his life, and ask me for everything I have in return!”
She looked beautiful as she knelt before him once more, so dishevelled and disordered, with upturned face and streaming hair. It seemed to the tribune as though a knife had been driven home to his heart; but he collected all his energies for a revenge commensurate to the hurt, as he threw himself indolently on the couch, a worse man by a whole age of malice than he had risen from it a few seconds before.
“Why did you not tell me sooner?” said he, in accents of the calmest courtesy and self‐command. “Fair Valeria! not more bargains are driven every day in the Forum than in the courts of Love! You offer liberal terms. It seems to me we have nothing left to do but to settle the remainder of the agreement.”
What a price was she paying for her interference! Not a woman in Rome could have felt more deeply the degradation she was accepting, the insult to which she was submitting; and through it all she was miserably conscious of a false move in the game she had the temerity to play against this formidable adversary. Still she had resolved that she would shrink from no humiliation to save Esca, and she blushed blood‐red with anger and shame as she rose from her knees, hid her face in her hands, while she summoned her woman’s wit and her woman’s powers of endurance to help her in the emergency.
He, too, had bethought him of an appropriate revenge. The tribune never forgave; for such an offence as the present it was his nature to seek reprisals, exceeding, in their subtle cruelty, the injury they were to atone. There is no venom so deadly as a bad man’s love turned to gall. It would be fine sport, thought Placidus, to make her slay this yellow‐haired darling of hers with her own hand. The triumph would be complete, when he had outwitted her at every point, and could sneer politely over the dead body of the man, and the passionate reproaches of the woman. The first step to so tempting a consummation was, of course, to put her off her guard, and for this it would be necessary to assume some natural displeasure and pique; too open a brow would surely arouse suspicions, so he spoke angrily, in the harsh excited tones of a generous man who has been wronged.