'You should have won Antonina,' said Marcian, with a return to his
sarcastic humour. 'She must have mused long and anxiously, weighing
the purple against Theodora's fury. The Patrician's fidelity stood
by his wife's prudence.'

'The one blot upon his noble nature,' uttered Basil, with a sigh.
'His one weakness. How,' he cried scornfully, 'can the conqueror of
half the world bend before such a woman?'

Fatigued already by the conversation, Maximus had lain back and
closed his eyes. Very soon the two young men received his permission
to withdraw, and, as they left the room, the physician entered.
Obedient to this counsellor the invalid gave several hours to
repose, but midway in the afternoon he again summoned his daughter,
with whom he had a long and agitating conversation. He besought
Aurelia to cast off her heretical religion, putting before her all
the perils to which she exposed herself, by abandonment of the true
faith, in this world and the next. His life was hurrying to its end;
hour by hour he felt the fever wasting what little strength remained
to him; and when he was gone who would protect her against the
enmities to which religion and avarice would expose her? Aurelia's
resistance was sullen rather than resolute; her countenance, her
words, suggested that she was thinking more of what it would cost
her pride to become a penitent than of any obstacle in conscience.
At length she declared plainly that never would she humiliate
herself before her aunt Petronilla, who had offered her no greeting
and held scornfully apart. Here, as Maximus too well knew, lay the
great difficulty of the situation; these women hated each other, and
their hate would only be exasperated by Aurelia's conversion. He