with notes of melancholy longing.

The house-keeper looked with mingled astonishment and anger at the two
laughing girls, then clapped her hands loudly, exclaiming:

"To work, wenches! You, Chloris, prepare the morning meal; and you,
Dorippe, see if the master wants anything, and bring fresh wood for the
fire. Stop your silly giggling, for laughing before sunrise causes tears
at evening. I suppose the jests of the vineyard watchmen are still
lingering in your heads. Now go, and don't touch food till you've
arranged your hair."

The girls, nudging each other, left the women's apartment, into which the
dawn was now shining more brightly through the open roof.

It was a stately room, surrounded by marble columns, which bore witness
to the owner's wealth, for the floor was beautifully adorned with bright-
hued pictures, mosaic work executed in colored stones by an artist from
Syracuse. They represented the young god Dionysius, the Hyades
surrounding him, and in colored groups all the gifts of the divinities
who watch over fields and gardens, as well as those of the Nysian god.
Each individual design, as well as the whole picture, was inclosed in a
framework of delicate lines. The hearth, over which Semestre now bent,
to fan the glimmering embers with a goose-wing, was made of yellow
marble.

Dorippe now returned, curtly said that the master wanted to be helped
into the open air, when the sun was higher, and brought, as she had been
ordered, a fresh supply of gnarled olive-branches, and pinecones, which,
kindling rapidly, coaxed the wood to unite its blaze with theirs.