of Ione, Glaucus felt only resentment and disgust that such lips should
dare to praise her; he answered coldly, and the Roman imagined that his
passion was cured instead of heightened. Clodius scarcely regretted it,
for he was anxious that Glaucus should marry an heiress yet more richly
endowed--Julia, the daughter of the wealthy Diomed, whose gold the
gamester imagined he could readily divert into his own coffers. Their
conversation did not flow with its usual ease; and no sooner had Clodius
left him than Glaucus bent his way to the house of Ione. In passing by
the threshold he again encountered Nydia, who had finished her graceful
task. She knew his step on the instant.

'You are early abroad?' said she.

'Yes; for the skies of Campania rebuke the sluggard who neglects them.'

'Ah, would I could see them!' murmured the blind girl, but so low that
Glaucus did not overhear the complaint.

The Thessalian lingered on the threshold a few moments, and then guiding
her steps by a long staff, which she used with great dexterity, she took
her way homeward. She soon turned from the more gaudy streets, and
entered a quarter of the town but little loved by the decorous and the
sober. But from the low and rude evidences of vice around her she was
saved by her misfortune. And at that hour the streets were quiet and
silent, nor was her youthful ear shocked by the sounds which too often
broke along the obscene and obscure haunts she patiently and sadly
traversed.

She knocked at the back-door of a sort of tavern; it opened, and a rude
voice bade her give an account of the sesterces. Ere she could reply,