Yes," replied Titianus, and he set his teeth as he spoke and clenched his
fist so hard that the praetor could not misunderstand, and replied in a
low voice:

"She is much to be pitied, and particularly just now she has hours--"

"What sort of hours?" asked Sabina taking the cup from her lips.

"These," replied Verus quickly, "in which I am not obliged to occupy
myself in the senate or with the affairs of state. To whom do I owe them
but to you?"

With these words he approached the mature beauty, and taking the goblet
out of her hand with affectionate subservience, as a son might wait on
his honored and suffering mother, he gave it to the Greek slave. The
Empress bowed her thanks again and again to the praetor with much
affability, and then said, with a slight infusion of cheerfulness
in her tones:

"Well--and what is there to be seen at Lochias?"

"Wonderful things," answered Balbilla readily and clasping her little
hands.

"A swarm of bees, a colony of ants, have taken possession of the palace.
Hands black, white and brown--more than we could count, are busy there
and of all the hundreds of workmen which are astir there, not one got in
the way of another, for one little man orders and manages them all, just
as the prescient wisdom of the gods guides the stars through the