While they were speaking they had been standing with their hands clasped.  Malchus, looking down into her face, over which the tears were now streaming as she recalled the sad events at home, wondered at the change which eighteen months had wrought in it.  Then she was a girl, now she was a beautiful woman —­ the fairest he had ever seen, Malchus thought, with her light brown hair with a gleam of gold, her deep gray eyes, and tender, sensitive mouth.

“And your mother?” he asked.

“She was with my father in the battle, and was left for dead on the field; but I heard from a captive, taken a month after I was, that she had survived, and was with the remnant of the tribe in the well nigh inaccessible fastnesses at the head of the Orcus.”

“We had best meet as strangers,” Malchus said.  “It were well that none suspect we have met before.  I shall not stay here long —­ if I am not exchanged.  I shall try to escape whatever be the risks, and if you will accompany me I will not go alone.”

“You know I will, Malchus,” Clotilde answered frankly.  “Whenever you give the word I am ready, whatever the risk is.  It should break my heart were I left here alone again.”

A footstep was heard approaching, and Clotilde, dropping Malchus’ hands, fled away into the inner apartments, while Malchus walked quietly on to the part of the house appropriated to the slaves.  The next day, having assumed his new garments, and having had a light gold ring, as a badge of servitude, fastened round his neck, Malchus accompanied Flavia and her daughter on a series of visits to their friends.

The meeting with Clotilde had delighted as much as it had surprised Malchus.  The figure of the Gaulish maiden had been often before his eyes during his long night watches.  When he was with her last he had resolved that when he next journeyed north he would ask her hand of the chief, and since his journey to Carthage his thoughts had still more often reverted to her.  The loathing which he now felt for Carthage had converted what was, when he was staying with Allobrigius, little more than an idea, into a fixed determination that he would cut himself loose altogether from corrupt and degenerate Carthage, and settle among the Gauls.  That he should find Clotilde captive in Rome had never entered his wildest imagination, and he now blessed, as a piece of the greatest good fortune, the chance, which had thrown him into the hands of the Romans, and brought him into the very house where Clotilde was a slave.  Had it not been for that he would never again have heard of her.  When he returned to her ruined home he would have found that she had been carried away by the Roman conquerors, but of her after fate no word could ever have reached him.

Some weeks passed, but no mode of escape presented itself to his mind.  Occasionally for a few moments he saw Clotilde alone, and they were often together in Flavia’s apartment, for the Roman lady was proud of showing off to her friends her two slaves, both models of their respective races.