‘Cousin,’ he resumed, ’I have a double thought in desiring that Venantius should come hither.  It is not only that I may talk with him of the war, and learn his hopes, but that I may secure a safe retreat for Veranilda when she is my wife, and for you, dear cousin, if you desire it.’

He spoke as strongly as he could without revealing the secret danger, of the risks to which they would all be exposed when rumours of his marriage reached the governor of Cumae, or the Greeks in Neapolis.  Until the Goths reached Campania, a Roman here who fell under suspicion of favouring them must be prepared either to flee or to 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 wealth, her enemies mute, powerless, submissive before her.  Then, if it seemed good to her, she would again wed, and her excited imagination deigned to think of no spouse save him whose alliance would make her royal.