During the whole of the scene Vetranio had stood so fixed in the
helpless astonishment of intoxication as to be incapable of moving or
uttering a word. All that took place during the short and terrible
interview between father and child utterly perplexed him. He heard no
loud, violent anger on one side, no clamorous petitioning for
forgiveness on the other. The stern old man whom Antonina had called
father, and who had been pointed out to him as the most austere
Christian in Rome, far from avenging his intrusion on Antonina's
slumber, had voluntarily abandoned his daughter to his licentious will.
That the anger or irony of so severe a man should inspire such an action
as this, or that Numerian, like his servant, was plotting to obtain some
strange mysterious favour from him by using Antonina as a bribe, seemed
perfectly impossible. all that passed before the senator was, to his
bewildered imagination, thoroughly incomprehensible. Frivolous,
thoughtless, profligate as he might be, his nature was not radically
base, and when the scene of which he had been the astounded witness was
abruptly terminated by the flight of Antonina, the look of frantic
misery fixed on him by the unfortunate girl at the moment of her
departure, almost sobered him for the instant, as he stood before the
now solitary father gazing vacantly around him with emotions of
uncontrollable confusion and dismay.
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