right to bring up the hapless little boy in her own house, at any rate
for the present. She knew how Selene clung to him, and hoped by his
presence to be able to work powerfully on the crushed and chilled heart
of the poor girl.

Arsinoe did not contravene the arrangements of the two women. She
thanked them, indeed, for she felt that she once more stood on firm
ground, but she also was immediately aware that it would be strewn with
sharp stones. The thought of parting from her little brothers and
sisters was terrible and cruel, and never left her mind for an instant,
while, accompanied by Hannah in person, she made her way back to Lochias.

The next morning her kind friend appeared again and led her and the
little troup to Paulina's town-house. The steward's creditors divided
his little possessions; nothing but the chest of papyri followed the girl
to her new home. The hour in which the fondly-linked circle of children
was riven asunder, when one child was taken here and another there, was
the bitterest which Arsinoe had ever experienced or ever could experience
through all the after years of her life.




CHAPTER XII.

A lovely garden adjoined the Caesareum, the palace in which Sabina was
residing. Balbilla was fond of lingering there, and as the morning of
the twenty-ninth of December was particularly brilliant--the sky and its
infinite mirror the sea, gleaming in indescribably deep blue, while the
fragrance of a flowering shrub was wafted in at her window like an