Fabia gave a scream and sprang back in instinctive alarm. In the
twinkling of an eye it flashed over her that for some purpose or other
she had been trapped. Gabinius she knew barely by sight; but his
reputation had come to her ears, and fame spoke nothing good of him.
Yet even at the moment when she felt herself in the most imminent
personal peril, the inbred dignity and composed hauteur of the Vestal
did not desert her. At the selfsame instant that she said to herself,
"Can I escape through the atrium before they can stop me?" recovering
from her first surprise, and with never a quiver of eyelash or a
paling of cheek, she was saying aloud, in a tone cold as ice, "And
indeed, most excellent Gabinius, you must pardon me for being
startled; for all that I know of you tells me that you are likely to
find a sombre Vestal sorry enough company."

Gabinius had been counting coolly on a very noisy scene, one of a kind
he was fairly familiar with--an abundance of screaming, expostulation,
tearing of hair, and other manifestations of feminine agony--to be
followed, of course, by ultimate submission to the will of
all-dominant man. He was not accustomed to have a woman look him
fairly in the eye and speak in tones, not of bootless fury, but of
superior scorn. And his answer was painfully lacking in the ascendant
volubility which would have befitted the occasion.

"Forgive me; pardon; it was of course necessary to resort to some
subterfuge in order--in order to prevent your attendants from becoming
suspicious."

Fabia cast a glance behind her, and saw that before the two doors
leading to the atrium her conductor and another tall slave had placed
themselves; but she replied in a tone a little more lofty, if