sudden flushing of color, as if she were on the point of tears. Aquila
stared absently out of the arch beyond.

Costobarus glanced from one to the other of his company and then went
toward the corridor to call his daughter. As he lifted the curtain, he
started and stopped.

[Illustration: At her feet Hannah knelt.]

The lifted curtain had revealed Laodice. At her feet Hannah knelt, as
if she had flung herself in her daughter's path, her arms clasping the
young figure close to her and an agony of appeal stamped on her
upraised face. The last of the rich color had died out of the girl's
face and with pitiful eyes and quivering lips she was stroking the
desperate hands that meant to keep her for ever.

Except for the sudden sobbing of the woman servant, tense and
anguished silence prevailed. The old merchant was confronted with a
perplexity that found him without fortitude to solve. He felt his
strength slip from him. He, too, covered his face with his hands.

At the opposite arch another house servant appeared, lifted a
distorted, blackening face and, doubling like a wounded snake, fell
upon the floor.

A moment of stupefied silence in which Hannah, with her mother
instincts never so acutely alive, turned her strained vision upon the
writhing figure. Then shrieks broke from the lips of the
serving-woman; the hall filled with panic. Hannah leaped to her feet
and thrust Laodice toward her father.