‘We humbly thank your Clemency,’ said Basil, his heart leaping in joy.  ’Does your Greatness permit me to order these trifles to be removed?’

‘Except the money,’ replied Chorsoman, growling next moment, ’and the vessels’; then snarling with a savage glance about him, ’and the jewels.’

Not till the gates of Cumae were behind them, and they had entered the cavern in the hill, did Basil venture to recount what had happened.  He alighted from his horse, and walking through the gloom beside the carriage he briefly narrated all in a whisper to Aurelia—­all except his own ingenious device for balking the Hun’s cupidity.  What means Marcian had employed for their release he could but vaguely conjecture; that would be learned a few days hence when his friend came again to Surrentum.  Aurelia’s companion in the carriage, still hooded and cloaked, neither moved nor uttered a word.

At a distance of some twenty yards from the end of the tunnel, Felix, riding in advance, checked his horse and shouted.  There on the ground lay a dead man, a countryman, who it was easy to see had been stabbed to death, and perhaps not more than an hour ago.  Quarrel or robbery, who could say?  An incident not so uncommon as greatly to perturb the travellers; they passed on and came to Puteoli.  Here the waiting boatmen were soon found; the party embarked; the vessel oared away in a dead calm.

The long voyage was tedious to Basil only because Veranilda remained unseen in the cabin; the thought of bearing her off; as though she were already his own, was an exultation, a rapture.  When he reflected on the indignities he had suffered in the citadel rage burned his throat, and Aurelia, all bitterness at the loss of her treasure, found words to increase this wrath.  A Hun!  A Scythian savage!  A descendant perchance of the fearful Attila!  He to represent the Roman Empire!  Fit instrument, forsooth, of such an Emperor as Justinian, whose boundless avarice, whose shameful subjection to the base-born Theodora, were known to every one.  To this had Rome fallen; and not one of her sons who dared to rise against so foul a servitude!

‘Have patience, cousin,’ Basil whispered, bidding her with a glance beware of the nearest boatman.  ’There are some who will not grieve if Totila—­’

’No more than that?  To stand, and look on, and play the courtier to whichever may triumph!’

Basil muttered with himself.  He wished he had been bred a soldier instead of growing to manhood in an age when the nobles of Rome were held to inglorious peace, their sole career that of the jurist And Aurelia, brooding, saw him involved beyond recall in her schemes of vengeance.

The purple evening fell about them, an afterglow of sunset trembling upon the violet sea.  Above the heights of Capreae a star began to glimmer; and lo, yonder from behind the mountains rose the great orb of the moon.  They were in the harbour at last, but had to wait on board until a messenger could go to the village and a conveyance arrive.  The litter came, with a horse for Basil; Felix, together with Aurelia’s grey-headed porter and a female slave—­these two the only servants that had remained in the house at Cumae—­ followed on foot, and the baggage was carried up on men’s shoulders.