CHAPTER XI.

Agne’s flight remained unperceived for some little time, for every member of the merchant’s household was at the moment intent on some personal interest.  When Karnis and Orpheus had set out Gorgo was left with her grandmother and it was not till some little time after that she went out into the colonade on the garden side of the house, whence she had a view over the park and the shore as far as the ship-yard.  There, leaning against the shaft of a pillar, under the shade of the blossoming shrubs, she stood gazing thoughtfully to the southward.

She was dreaming of the past, of her childhood’s joys and privations.  Fate had bereft her of a mother’s love, that sun of life’s spring.  Below her, in a splendid mausoleum of purple porphyry, lay the mortal remains of the beautiful woman who had given her birth, and who had been snatched away before she could give her infant a first caress.  But all round the solemn monument gardens bloomed in the sunshine, and on the further side of the wall covered with creepers, was the ship-yard, the scene of numberless delightful games.  She sighed as she looked at the tall hulks, and watched for the man who, from her earliest girlhood, had owned her heart, whose image was inseparable from every thing of joy and beauty that she had ever known, and every grief her young soul had suffered under.

Constantine, the younger son of Clemens the shipbuilder, had been her brothers’ companion and closest friend.  He had proved himself their superior in talents and gifts, and in all their games had been the recognized leader.  While still a tiny thing she would always be at their heels, and Constantine had never failed to be patient with her, or to help and protect her, and then came a time when the lads were all eager to win her sympathy for their games and undertakings.  When her grandmother read in the stars that some evil influences were to cross the path of Gorgo’s planet, the girl was carefully kept in the house; at other times she was free to go with the boys in the garden, on the lake or to the ship-yard.  There the happy playmates built houses or boats; there, in a separate room, old Melampus modelled figure-heads for the finished vessels, and he would supply them with clay and let them model too.  Constantine was an apt pupil, and Gorgo would sit quiet while he took her likeness, till, out of twenty images that he had made of her, several were really very like.  Melampus declared that his young master might be a very distinguished sculptor if only he were the son of poor parents, and Gorgo’s father appreciated his talent and was pleased when the boy attempted to copy the beautiful busts and statues of which the house was full; but to his parents, and especially his mother, his artistic proclivities were an offence.  He himself, indeed, never seriously thought of devoting himself to such a heathenish occupation,