‘Wonderfully!’ answered the jeweller; for jewellers were well-bred and flattering men, even at that day.  ’But when these ear-rings glitter in the ears of the noble Ione, then, by Bacchus! you will see whether my art adds anything to beauty.’

‘Ione?’ repeated Nydia, who had hitherto 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 raising her, he kissed her forehead, ’think of it no more!  But why, my child, wert thou so suddenly angry?  I could not divine the cause?’