“Honorable this, and honorable that!” cried Keraunus, as he tied up his money-bag.  “I know well enough how shameless are the goings on in assemblies of that stamp; kissing and hugging slaves! quite the right sort of thing for my daughter!  Come Arsinoe, let us find a litter at once!”

“No, no!” exclaimed Doris eagerly.  “For the present you must leave her in peace.  I should be glad to conceal it from you as a father—­but the physician declared it might cost her her life if she were not left just now in perfect quiet.  No one goes to any kind of assembly with a burning wound in the head, a high fever and a broken leg.—­Poor dear child!”

Keraunus stood silent in grave consternation, while Arsinoe exclaimed through her tears: 

“But I must go to her, I must see her Doris.”

“That I cannot blame you for, my pretty one,” said the old woman.  I have already been to the house of the Christians, but they would not let me in to see the patient.  With you it is rather different as you are her sister.”

“Come father,” begged Arsinoe, “first let us see to the children, and then you shall come with me to see Selene.  Oh! why did I not go with her.  Oh! if she should die.”

CHAPTER XX.

Keraunus and his daughter reached their rooms less quickly than usual, for the steward dreaded a fresh attack from the blood-hound, which, to-night however, was sharing Antinous’ room.  They found the old slavewoman up, and in great excitement, for she loved Selene, she was frightened at her absence, and in the children’s sleeping-room all was not as it should be.

Arsinoe went without delay to see the little ones, but the black woman remained with her master, and told him with many tears, while he exchanged his saffron-colored pallium for an old cloak, that the joy of her heart, little blind Helios had been ill, and could not sleep, even after she had given him some of the drops which Keraunus himself was accustomed to take.

“Idiotic animal!” exclaimed Keraunus, “to give my medicine to the child,” and he kicked off his new shoes to replace them with shabbier ones.  “If you were younger I would have you flogged.”

“But you did say the drops were good,” stammered the old woman.

“For me,” shouted the steward, and without fastening his shoe-straps round his ankles, so that they flapped and pattered on the ground, he hurried off into the children’s room.  There sat his darling blind child, his ‘neir’ as he liked to call him, with his pretty, fair, curly head resting on Arsinoe’s breast.  The child recognized his step, and began his little lament: 

“Selene was away, and I was frightened, and I feel so sick, so sick.”

The steward laid his hand on the child’s forehead, and feeling how hot it was he began to walk restlessly up and down by the little bed.

“That is just how it always happens,” he said.  “When one misfortune comes another always follows.  Look at him Arsinoe.  Do you remember how the fever took poor Berenice?  Sickness, uneasiness, and a burning head.  —­“Have you any pain in your head my boy?”