No father could have received his future daughter more heartily than did old Polybius.  The fiend gout racked his big toes, stabbing, burning, and nipping them.  The slightest movement was torture, and yet he held out his arms to her for a loving embrace, and, though it made him shut his eyes and groan, he drew her pretty head down, and kissed her cheeks and hair.  He was now a heavy man, of almost shapeless stoutness, but in his youth he must have resembled his handsome son.  Silvery locks flowed round his well-formed head, but a habit of drinking wine, which, in spite of the gout, he could not bring himself to give up, had flushed his naturally good features, and tinged them of a coppery red, which contrasted strangely with his snowy hair and beard.  But a kind heart, benevolence, and a love of good living, beamed in every look.

His heavy limbs moved but slowly, and if ever full lips deserved to be called sensual, they were those of this man, who was a priest of two divinities.

How well his household understood the art of catering for his love of high living, was evident in the meal which was served soon after Melissa’s arrival, and to eat which the old man made her recline on the couch by his side.

Andreas also shared the supper; and not the attendant slaves only, but Dame Praxilla, the sister of their host, whose house she managed, paid him particular honor.  She was a widow and childless, and, even during the lifetime of Diodoros’s mother, she had given her heart, no longer young, to the freedman, without finding her love returned or even observed.  For his sake she would have become a Christian, though she regarded herself as so indispensable to her brother that she had rarely left him to hold intercourse with other Christians.  Nor did Andreas encourage her; he doubted her vocation.  Whatever happened in the house, the excitable woman made it her own concern; and, although she had known Melissa from childhood, and was as fond of her as she could be of the child of “strangers,” the news that Diodoros was to marry the gem-cutter’s daughter was displeasing to her.  A second woman in the house might interfere with her supremacy; and, as an excuse for her annoyance, she had represented to her brother that Diodoros might look higher for a wife.  Agatha, the beautiful daughter of their rich Christian neighbor Zeno, was the right bride for the boy.

But Polybius had rated her sharply, declaring that he hoped for no sweeter daughter than Melissa, who was quite pretty enough, and in whose veins as pure Macedonian blood flowed as in his own.  His son need look for no wealth, he added with a laugh, since he would some day inherit his aunt’s.

In fact, Praxilla owned a fine fortune, increasing daily under the care of Andreas, and she replied: 

“If the young couple behave so well that I do not rather choose to bestow my pittance on worthier heirs.”

But the implied threat had not disturbed Polybius, for he knew his sister’s ways.  The shriveled, irritable old lady often spoke words hard to be forgiven, but she had not a bad heart; and when she learned that Diodoros was in danger, she felt only how much she loved him, and her proposal to go to the town next morning to nurse him was sincerely meant.