’She is wondrous at this art.  In a contest with Minerva, would she not have fared better than Arachne?  This mourning garment which I wear is of her making, and look at the delicate work; it was wrought four years ago, when I heard of my brother’s death—­wrought in a few days.  She was then but thirteen.  In all that it beseems a woman to know, she is no less skilled.  Yonder lies her cithern; she learnt to touch it, I scarce know how, out of mere desire to soothe my melancholy, and I suspect—­though she will not avow it—­that the music she plays is often her own.  In sickness she has tended me with skill as rare as her gentleness; her touch on the hot forehead is like that of a flower plucked before sunrise.  Hearing me speak thus of her, what think you, O Basil, must be my trust in the man to whom I would give her for wife?’

‘Can you doubt my love, O Aurelia?’ cried the listener, clasping his hands before him.

‘Your love?  No.  But your prudence, is that as little beyond doubt?’

‘I have thought long and well,’ said Basil.

Aurelia regarded him steadily.

‘You spoke with her in the garden just now.  Did she reply?’

’But few words.  She asked me if I knew her origin, and blushed as she spoke.’

‘It is her wish that I should tell you; and I will.’

Scarce had Aurelia begun her narrative, when Basil perceived that his own conjecture, and that of Marcian, had hit the truth.  Veranilda was a great-grandchild of Amalafrida, the sister of King Theodoric, being born of the daughter of King Theodahad; and her father was that Ebrimut, whose treachery at the beginning of the great war delivered Rhegium into the hands of the Greeks.  Her mother, Theodenantha, a woman of noble spirit, scorned the unworthy Goth, and besought the conqueror to let her remain in Italy, even as a slave, rather than share with such a husband the honours of the Byzantine court.  She won this grace from Belisarius, and was permitted to keep with her the little maiden, just growing out of childhood.  But shame and grief had broken her heart; after a few months of imprisonment at Cumae she died.  And Veranilda passed into the care of the daughter of Maximus.

‘For I too was a captive,’ said Aurelia, ’and of the same religion as the orphan child.  By happy hazard I had become a friend of her mother, in those days of sorrow; and with careless scorn our conquerors permitted me to take Veranilda into my house.  As the years went by, she was all but forgotten; there came a new governor—­this thievish Hun—­who paid no heed to us.  I looked forward to a day when we might quit Cumae and live in freedom where we would.  Then something unforeseen befell.  Half a year ago, just when the air of spring began to breathe into that dark, chill house, a distant kinsman of ours, who has long dwelt in Byzantium—­do you know Olybrius, the son of Probinus?’

‘I have heard his name.’