A slave was listening with watchful and half terrified attention to the injunctions of his lord--for Catiline was an unscrupulous and severe master--and, as he ceased speaking, he made a deep genuflexion and retired.
No sooner had he gone than Catiline turned quickly to the lady, whose lovely face wore some marks of displeasure, and said rather shortly,
"You have not gone to her, my Aurelia. There is no time to lose; the young man will be here soon, and if they meet, ere you have given her the cue, all will be lost."
"I do not like it, my Sergius," said the woman, rising, but making no movement to leave the chamber.
"And why not, I beseech you, madam?" he replied angrily; "or what is there in that which I desire you to tell the girl to do, that you have not done twenty times yourself, and Fulvia, and Sempronia, and half Rome's noblest ladies? Tush! I say, tush! go do it."
"She is my daughter, Sergius," answered Aurelia, in a tone of deep tenderness; "a daughter's honor must be something to every mother!"
"And a son's life to every father!" said Catiline with a fierce sneer. "I had a son once, I remember. You wished to enter an (14)_empty_ house on the day of your marriage feast. I do not think you found him in your way! Besides, for honor--if I read Lucia's eyes rightly, there is not much of that to emperil."
When he spoke of his son, she covered her face in her richly jewelled hands, and a slight shudder shook her whole frame. When she looked up again, she was pale as death, and her lips quivered as she asked--
"Must I, then? Oh! be merciful, my Sergius."
"You must, Aurelia!" he replied sternly, "and that now. Our fortunes, nay, our lives, depend on it!"
"All that he asks! But fear not, he shall wed her, when our plans shall be crowned with triumph!"
"By all the Gods! he shall! by all the Furies, if you will, by Earth, and Heaven, and Hades!"
"I will go," she replied, something reassured, "and prepare her for the task!"
"The task!" he muttered with his habitual sneer. "Daintily worded, fair one; but it will not, I fancy, prove a hard one; Paullus is young and handsome; and our soft Lucia has, methinks, something of her mother's yielding tenderness."
"Nay! rather I adore thee for it, loveliest one; but go and prepare our Lucia." Then, as she left the room, the dark scowl settled down on his black brow, and he clinched his hand as he said--