“Reflect, child, pause; think over what I have been saying to you; remember, too, what you owe the little one you love, and to-morrow morning tell us that you have duly weighed your answer.  Give me your hand, my daughter; believe me, Olympius is one of your sincerest well-wishers.”

He turned his back on her and was going in doors.  In front of the house Porphyrius and Karnis were standing in eager colloquy.  The news that Marcus’ mother Mary had sent for Herse had reached the singer, and his vivid fancy painted his wife as surrounded by a thousand perils, threatened by the widow, and carried before the judges.  The merchant advised him to wait and see what came of it, as did Damia and Gorgo who were attracted to the spot by the vehemence of the discussion; but Karnis would not be detained, and he and Orpheus hurried off to the rescue.  Thus Agne was left alone in the garden with her little brother, and perceiving that no one paid any further attention to their proceedings, she fell on her knees, clasped the child closely to her and whispered: 

“Pray with me, Papias; pray, pray that the Lord will protect us, and that we may not be turned out of the way that leads us to our parents!  Pray, as I do!”

For a minute she remained prostrate with the child by her side.  Then, rising quickly, she took him by the hand and led him in almost breathless haste through the garden-gate out into the road, bending her steps towards the lake and then down the first turning that led to the city.

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SERAPIS

By Georg Ebers

Volume 3.

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 colonnade 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.