CHAPTER VII.

When he reached the Caesareum the high-chamberlain was waiting to conduct him to Sabina who desired to speak with him notwithstanding the lateness of the hour, and when Verus entered the presence of his patroness, he found her in the greatest excitement.  She was not reclining as usual on her pillows but was pacing her room with strides of very unfeminine length.

“It is well that you have come!” she exclaimed to the praetor.  “Lentulus insists that he has seen Mastor the slave, and Balbilla declares—­but it is impossible!”

“You think that Caesar is here?” asked Verus.

“Did they tell you so too?”

“No.  I do not linger to talk when you require my presence and there is something important to be told just now then—­but you must not be alarmed.”

“No useless speeches!”

“Just now I met, in his own person—­”

“Who?”

“Hadrian.”

“You are not mistaken, you are sure you saw him?”

“With these eyes.”

“Abominable, unworthy, disgraceful!” cried Sabina, so loudly and violently that she was startled at the shrill tones of her own voice.  Her tall thin figure quivered with excitement, and to any one else she would have appeared in the highest degree graceless, unwomanly, and repulsive:  but Verus had been accustomed from his childhood to see her with kinder eyes than other men, and it grieved him.

There are women who remind us of fading flowers, extinguished lights or vanishing shades, and they are not the least attractive of their sex:  but the large-boned, stiff and meagre Sabina had none of the yielding and tender grace of these gentle creatures.  Her feeble health, which was very evident, became her particularly ill when, as at this moment, the harsh acrimony of her embittered soul came to light with hideous plainness.

She was deeply indignant at the affront her husband had put upon her.  Not content with having a separate house established for her he kept aloof in Alexandria without informing her of his arrival.  Her hands trembled with rage, and stammering rather than speaking she desired the praetor to order a composing draught for her.  When Verus returned she was lying on her cushions, with her face turned to the wall, and said lamentably: 

“I am freezing; spread that coverlet over me.  I am a miserable, ill-used creature.”

“You are sensitive and take things too hardly,” the praetor ventured to remonstrate.

She started up angrily, cut off his speech, and put him through as keen a cross-examination as if he were an accused person and she his judge.  Ere long she had learnt that Verus also had encountered Mastor, that her husband was residing at Lochias, that he had taken part in the festival in disguise, and had exposed himself to grave danger outside the house of Apollodorus.  She also made him tell her how the Israelite had been rescued, and whom her friend had met in his house, and she blamed Verus with bitter words for the heedless and foolhardy recklessness with which he had risked his life for a miserable Jew, forgetting the high destinies that lay before him.  The praetor had not interrupted her, but now bowing over her, he kissed her hand and said: