“You will seek in vain,” replied Petrus, commanding himself with difficulty.  “My word is yea or nay, and I repeat once more no, we harbor neither her nor him.  As for Dorothea and myself—­neither of us is inclined to interfere in your concerns, but neither will we permit another—­be he whom he may—­to interfere in ours.  This threshold shall never be crossed by any but those to whom I grant permission, or by the emperor’s judge, to whom I must yield.  You, I forbid to enter.  Sirona is not here, and you would do better to seek her elsewhere than to fritter away your time here.”

“I do not require your advice!” cried the centurion wrathfully.

“And I,” retorted Petrus, “do not feel myself called upon to arrange your matrimonial difficulties.  Besides you can get back Sirona without our help, for it is always more difficult to keep a wife safe in the house, than to fetch her back when she has run away.”

“You shall learn whom you have to deal with!” threatened the centurion, and he threw a glance round at the slaves, who had collected in the court, and who had been joined by the senator’s eldest son.  “I shall call my people together at once, and if you have the seducer among you we will intercept his escape.”

“Only wait an hour,” said Dorothea, now taking up the word, while she gently touched her husband’s hand, for his self-control was almost exhausted, “I and you will see Polykarp ride home on his father’s horse.  Is it only from the roses that my son threw into your wife’s window, that you suppose him to be her seducer—­she plays so kindly with all his brothers and sisters—­or are there other reasons, which move you to insult and hurt us with so heavy an accusation?”

Often when wrathful men threaten to meet with an explosion, like black thunder-clouds, a word from the mouth of a sensible woman gives them pause, and restrains them like a breath of soft wind.

Phoebicius had no mind to listen to any speech from Polykarp’s mother, but her question suggested to him for the first time a rapid retrospect of all that had occurred, and he could not conceal from himself that his suspicions rested on weak grounds.  And at the same time he now said to himself, that if indeed Sirona had fled into the desert instead of to the senator’s house he was wasting time, and letting the start, which she had already gained, increase in a fatal degree.

But few seconds were needed for these reflections, and as he was accustomed when need arose to control himself, he said: 

“We must see—­some means must be found—­” and then without any greeting to his host, he slowly returned to his own house.  But he had not reached the door, when he heard hoofs on the road, and Petrus called after him, “Grant us a few minutes longer, for here comes Polykarp, and he can justify himself to you in his own person.”

The centurion paused, the senator signed to old Jethro to open the gate; a man was heard to spring from his saddle, but it was an Amalekite—­and not Polykarp—­who came into the court.