These things read Julius with a knitted brow That discomposure with resentment showed; Then mastering himself to courtesy Wherein some air of condescension played, He made his peace by gesture without word, And slowly, like one doubting, went away.
With nothing said or signed to set in light The meaning of the message thus conveyed, Paul from the person of the messenger, Well-known a slave of Felix's, divined The meaning mischievous, but kept his thought And only said: "With the centurion now Our guest no longer, and the day so far Declined from its meridian, meet perhaps It were to let our interrupted tale From Mary--thanks to whom once more we owe-- Rest till to-morrow, if to-morrow be Ours, and the weather then still smile as now: God will still smile, through weather fair or foul. And now to God our Father blessing be, From whom all blessing is, and to His Son, And to the Holy Ghost. Amen!"
"Amen!" They echoed all, with not even Krishna mute; Then silently and solemnly withdrew.
Drusilla has a confidential conference with Simon the sorcerer, now recovered, though still weak. He tempts her to think of ensnaring the emperor with her charms. He insinuates into her mind the idea of making away with Felix on the ground of his being an obstacle in her path to success With this in view, he forms suddenly a plot to convict Felix in his wife's eyes of infidelity to herself. He easily awakens Drusilla's jealousy, and she, with her own motives, enters into Simon's present proposals. Eunicé is accordingly invited to visit Drusilla as one repentant and desirous of being a Christian--Felix having meantime been filled by Simon with the notion that Eunicé is enamored of him, Felix. She comes with her mother to Felix's house, and the two are there entrapped; but at the crisis of danger they are rescued by young Stephen.
That bland sweet weather changed to truculent At sunset, and through all the winter night Raged with wild wind and sleet of rain and hail. The roofs, the doors, the casements, of the house Where Felix and Drusilla sojourned, shook As toward dilapidation of its frame. Drusilla lay in terror of her life Tossing upon her couch and could not sleep. Brief intervals and lulls of tempest came; But images of distant danger then Mixed with the imminent menaces of the night. So with the earliest morning--furious yet The unabated rack of elements-- Drusilla sent for Simon, rallied now Out of his low estate, and, tremulous With weakness, through that very weakness made More searchingly clairvoyant than his wont.