of rank, a tribune, craved to be admitted.

When Berenike refused to receive him, the maid assured her that he was a
young man, and had expressed his wish to bring an urgent request to the
lady's notice in a becoming and modest manner.

On this the matron allowed him to be shown in to her, and Melissa hastily
obeyed her instructions to withdraw into the adjoining room.

Only a half-drawn curtain divided it from the room where Berenike
received the soldier, and without listening she could hear the loud voice
which riveted her attention as soon as she had recognized it.

The young tribune, in a tone of courteous entreaty, begged his hostess to
provide a room for his brother, who was severely wounded. The sufferer
was in a high fever, and the physician said that the noise and rattle of
vehicles in the street, on which the room where he now lay looked out,
and the perpetual coming and going of the men, might endanger his life.
He had just been told that on the side of the women's apartments there
was a row of rooms looking out on the impluvium, and he ventured to
entreat her to spare one of them for the injured man. If she had a
brother or a child, she would forgive the boldness of his request.

So far she listened in silence; then she suddenly raised her head and
measured the petitioner's tall figure with a lurid fire in her eye. Then
she replied, while she looked into his handsome young face with a half-
scornful, half-indignant air: "Oh, yes! I know what it is to see one we
love suffer. I had an only child; she was the joy of my heart. Death--
death snatched her from me, and a few days later the sovereign whom
you serve commanded us to prepare a feast for him. It seemed to him