What mattered it if they were followers of
Christians, members of a despised sect? They were his own, and he
loved them. His business was ruined, his home deserted, the emperor no
longer looked on him with favor. All was gone.
In the room near by, Claudia lay weeping. She, too, was broken-
hearted. Her daughter, her ambitions, all those things which formed
her life had vanished as suddenly as the dew dries upon the green
grass in midsummer.
The lawyer was sitting in the garden. Bright yellow and scarlet
dahlias bloomed around him; plumy lavender and rose colored asters
nodded cheerfully in the chill breeze of this first of November. The
water in the fountain rippled as musically as in those happy days, now
gone.
That morning early, Aurelius had gone again to the Senator Adrian
Soderus, to whom Virgilia had so cruelly been betrothed. It was a sign
that no longer was the lawyer held in high esteem, when he was kept
waiting in the outer chamber, and a message was brought him by a young
slave that the Senator could no longer receive him.
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