“Wounded!” cried Keraunus, and his eyes rolled slowly from right to left and from left to right.

“Look at the swelling!” cried the old woman in broken Greek, raising Selene’s snow-white foot in her black hands for her father to see.  “Thousands of fine ladies have hands that are not so small.  Poor, poor little foot,” and as she spoke the old woman pressed it to her lips.

Selene pushed her aside, and said, turning to her father: 

“The cut on my head is nothing to speak of, but the muscles and veins here at the ancle are swelled and my leg hurts me rather when I tread.  When the dog threw me down I must have hit it against the stone step.”

“It is outrageous!” cried Keraunus, the blood again mounting to his head, “only wait and I will show them what I think of their goings on.”

“No, no,” entreated Selene, “only beg them politely to shut up the dog, or to chain it, so that it may not hurt the children.”

Her voice trembled with anxiety as she spoke the words, for the dread, which, she knew not why, had so long been tormenting her lest her father should lose his place, seemed to affect her more than ever to-day.

“What! civil words after what has now happened?” cried Keraunus indignantly, and as if something quite unheard of had been suggested to him.

“Nay, nay, say what you mean,” shrieked the old woman.  “If such a thing had occurred to your father he would have fallen on the strange builder with a good thrashing.”

“And his son Keraunus will not let him off,” declared the steward, quitting the room without heeding Selene’s entreaty not to let himself be provoked.

In the ante-chamber he found his old slave whom he ordered to take a stick and go before him to announce him to Pontius’ guest, the architect, who was lodging in the rooms in the wing near the fountain.  This was the elegant thing to do, and by this means the black slave would meet the big dog before his master who held him and all dogs in the utmost abhorrence.  As he approached his destination he found himself quite in the humor to speak his mind to the stranger who had come here with a ferocious hound to tear the members of his family.

CHAPTER XIV.

Hadrian had slept most comfortably; only a few hours it is true, but they had sufficed to refresh his spirit.  He was now in his sitting-room and had gone to the window, which took up more than half the extent of the long west wall of the room, and opened on the sea.  The wide opening, which extended downwards to within a few spans of the floor, was finished at either side by a tall pillar of fine reddish-brown porphyry, flecked with white, and crowned with gilt Corinthian capitals.

Against one of these the Emperor was leaning stroking the blood-hound, whose prompt and vigorous watchfulness had pleased him greatly.  What did he care for the terrors the dog might have caused a mere girl?