another man had certainly slain the noble Nigrinus. At this moment the
old suspicion stirred her soul with revived force, and lifting her right
hand, as if in attestation, she exclaimed:

"Oh, Fate, Fate! that my husband should be heir of the man who murdered
my father!"

"Lucilla," interrupted Verus, "it is unjust even to think of such
horrors, and to speak of them is madness. Do not utter it a second time,
least of all to-day. What may have occurred formerly must not spoil the
present and the future which belong to us and to our children."

"Nigrinus was the grandfather of those children," cried the Roman mother
with flashing eyes.

"That is to say that you harbor in your soul the wish to avenge your
father's death on Caesar."

"I am the daughter of the butchered man."

"But you do not know the murderer, and the purple must outweigh the life
of one man, for it is often bought with many thousand lives. And then,
Lucilla, as you know, I love happy faces, and Revenge has a sinister
brow. Let us be happy, oh wife of Caesar! Tomorrow I shall have much to
tell you, now I must go to a splendid banquet which the son of Plutarch
is giving in my honor. I cannot stay with you--truly I cannot, I have
been expected long since. And when we are in Rome never let me find you
telling the children those old dismal stories--I will not have it."

As Verus, preceded by his slaves bearing torches, made his way through