Virgilia watched her mother, with an anxious look on her young face.

"Why didst thou not also kneel before the holy one?" her mother said,
in a stern tone. "Dost not know that in her hands she holds such power
that even the emperor himself trembles before her and does her
bidding, lest the gods send upon him disaster and ruin?"

Virgilia made no reply, but walked quietly by her mother's side
through the Forum, beneath the great arches, up over the Capitoline
Hill where Jupiter's Temple arose in grandeur, its ivory-tinted
marbles beginning to turn a dull rose in the rays of the fast-lowering
sun.

They descended on the other side and entered a labyrinth of narrow
streets, winding in and out between rows of houses, most of them
showing a plain, windowless front, the only decoration being over and
around the door.

With a quick double-knock at one of these doors, the lawyer summoned a
servant, who bowed deeply as the two ladies and his master entered.

Aurelius Lucanus lingered a moment, while his wife passed on into the
atrium, but here, it was hot, so she went further, into a court,
transformed into a beautiful garden. Around the fountain, which cooled
the air, bloomed literally hundreds of calla lilies, masses of stately
blossoms with snowy chalices and hearts of gold. Around the pillars
twined the June roses, pink and yellow, and mixed with them were
vines, of starry jessamine, shedding forth a faint, delicious odor,
akin to that of orange-blossoms.