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?”

“No,” answered Helios, “but I feel so sick.”

The steward opened the child’s little shirt to see if he had any spots on his breast, but Arsinoe said, as she bent over him: 

“It is nothing much, he has only overloaded his stomach.  The stupid old woman gives him every thing he asks for, and she let him have half of the currant cake, which we sent her to fetch before we went out.”

“But his head is burning,” repeated Keraunus.

“He will be quite well again by to-morrow morning,” replied Arsinoe.  “Our poor Selene needs us far snore than he does.  Come father.  The old woman can stay with him.”

“I want Selene to come,” whimpered the child.  “Pray, pray, do not leave me alone again.”

“Your old father will stay with you my pet,” said Keraunus tenderly, for it cut him to the soul to see this child suffer.  “You none of you know what this boy is to us all.”

“He will soon go to sleep,” Arsinoe asserted.  “Do let us go, or it will be too late.”