The old, proud Claudia seemed to have disappeared and in her place was
a feeble woman, with trembling hands, whose glance followed every move
her daughter made, who seemed to be happy only when Virgilia was near.
She ignored the ministrations of the slave Sahira, whose heart warmed
to only one person except her father, and that was her beautiful
mistress. Sahira cast angry looks at Virgilia's fair head, bending
over her embroidery while she talked cheerfully to her mother. The
slave went away and cried, for she was of a deep, passionate nature,
loving few and ready to lay down her life for those whom she adored.

Alyrus, her father, found her crying one night in her tiny room in the
section of the house assigned to the servants. He succeeded in finding
out the thing that caused her sorrow. When he went away there was a
resolution formed in his soul which boded ill to Virgilia. He would
bide his time--and then--

The young Christian wondered often whether her mother had forgotten
that scene on the day she was taken so ill, had forgotten that she, as
well as Martius, was one of the despised sect. Up to the present,
Virgilia had never refused to twine the garlands to be laid on the
altars of the household gods or at the feet of the special god which
Claudia worshipped in her own room. She had not refused because she
felt that it would agitate her mother too much, and the man who came
from the School of Esculapsius on the Island in the Tiber where the
Temple was, had warned them against exciting the invalid. It might
cause her death, he said.

Virgilia knew, however, that the time must come soon when, if she was
loyal to her faith, she must refuse to offer outward homage to the