family.

But Andreas had already heard from the physician that Caracalla had
informed his mother's envoys of his intended marriage with an
Alexandrian, the daughter of an artist of Macedonian extraction. This
could only refer to Melissa, and it was this news which had caused him
to urge the maiden to instant flight.

Pale, incapable of uttering a word, Melissa stood before her father; but
the freedman grasped her hand, looked Heron reproachfully in the face,
and asked, quietly, "And you would really have the heart to join this
dear child's life to that of a bloody tyrant?"

"Certainly I have," returned Heron with decision, and he drew his
daughter's hand out of that of Andreas, who turned his back upon the
artist with a meaning shrug of the shoulders. But Melissa ran after him,
and, clinging to him, cried as she turned first to him and then to her
father:

"I am promised to Diodoros, and shall hold fast to him and my love; tell
him that, Andreas! Come what may, I will be his and his alone! Caesar--"

"Swear not!" broke in Heron, angrily, "for by great Serapis--"

But Alexander interposed between them, and begged his father to consider
what he was asking of the girl. Caesar's proposals could scarcely have
been very pleasing to him, or why had he concealed till now what
Caracalla was whispering to him in the adjoining room? He might imagine
for himself what fate awaited the helpless child at the side of a husband
at whose name even men trembled. He should remember her mother, and what