She bowed her head in her hands, and as the wealth of brown hair showered over her white shoulders, they heaved as if she wept. Myrrhina looked reproachfully at the tribune, and muttered, “Oh! if he knew, if he only _knew_!”
In his dealings with the other sex Placidus had always been of opinion that it is better to untie a knot than to cut it.
“Fair Valeria,” said he, “ask me anything but this. I am pledged to slay this man within twenty‐four hours; will not that content you?”
The exigency of the situation, the danger of him for whom she had conceived so wild and foolish a passion, sharpened her powers of deception, and made her reckless of her own feelings, her own degradation. Shaking the hair back from her temples, beautiful in her disorder and her tears, she looked with wet eyes in the tribune’s face, while she replied—
“Do you think I care for the barbarian? What difference can it make to Valeria if such as this Briton were slain by hecatombs? It is for Myrrhina’s sake I grieve; and more, far more than this, to think that you can refuse me anything in the whole world!”
Duplicity was no new effort for the tribune. He had often, ere now, betaken himself to this mode of defence when driven to his last ward. He raised her hands respectfully to his lips.
“Be it as you will,” said he; “I make him over to you to do with him what you please. Esca is your property, beautiful Valeria, from this hour.”
A dark thought had flitted through his brain, that it would be no such difficult matter to destroy an inconvenient witness, and retain the favour of an exacting mistress at the same time. It was but a grain or two of poison in the slave’s last meal, and he might depart in peace, a doomed man, to Valeria’s mansion. He would take the chance of his silence for the few hours that intervened, and after all, the ravings of one whose brow was already stamped with death would arouse little suspicion. Afterwards it would be easy to pacify Valeria, and shift the blame on some over‐ zealous freedman, or officious client. He did not calculate on the haste with which women jump to conclusions. Valeria clapped her hands with unusual glee. “Quick! Myrrhina,” said she, “my tablets to the tribune. He shall write the order here, and my people can go for the slave and bring him back, before Placidus departs.”