tread it together! We know each other so perfectly, and I know, I feel,
that it will perhaps be a comfort to our hearts to be patient with each
other over matters which our judgment fails to comprehend or even to
approve. I might be so unutterably happy; but my heart trembles within
me, and I am not, I dare not be quite glad yet."




CHAPTER XII.

The young soldier was heartily welcomed by his friends of the merchant's
family; but old Damia was a little uneasy at the attitude which he and
Gorgo had taken up after their first greeting. He was agitated and
grave, she was eager and excited, with an air of determined enterprise.

Was Eros at the bottom of it all? Were the young people going to carry
out the jest of their childhood in sober earnest? The young officer was
handsome and attractive enough, and her granddaughter after all was but a
woman.

So far as Constantine was concerned the old lady had no personal
objection to him; nay, she appreciated his steady, grave manliness and,
for his own sake, was very glad to see him once more; but to contemplate
the ship-builder's son--the grandson of a freedman--a Christian and
devoted to the Emperor, even though he were a prefect or of even higher
grade--as a possible suitor for her Gorgo, the beautiful heiress of the
greater part of her wealth--the centre of attraction to all the gilded
youth of Alexandria--this was too much for her philosophy; and, as she
had never in her life restrained the expression of her sentiments, though