while we are contending--our peace-offering to the Senate if we
fail--our first victim if we succeed."

"Hark! what noise was that?"

"Somebody in the terrace --lend me your dagger."

Catiline rushed to the window. Zoe was standing in the shade.
He stepped out. She darted into the room--passed like a flash of
lightning by the startled Cethegus--flew down the stairs--through
the court--through the vestibule--through the street. Steps,
voices, lights, came fast and confusedly behind her; but with the
speed of love and terror she gained upon her pursuers. She fled
through the wilderness of unknown and dusky streets, till she
found herself, breathless and exhausted, in the midst of a crowd
of gallants, who, with chaplets on their heads and torches in
their hands, were reeling from the portico of a stately mansion.

The foremost of the throng was a youth whose slender figure and
beautiful countenance seemed hardly consistent with his sex. But
the feminine delicacy of his features rendered more frightful the
mingled sensuality and ferocity of their expression. The
libertine audacity of his stare, and the grotesque foppery of his
apparel, seemed to indicate at least a partial insanity.
Flinging one arm round Zoe, and tearing away her veil with the
other, he disclosed to the gaze of his thronging companions the
regular features and large dark eyes which characterise Athenian
beauty.

"Clodius has all the luck to-night," cried Ligarius.