'
Again Basil stood for a moment voiceless in wrath. Then he threw up
an arm, and spoke with terrible vehemence.
'Woman, if you have lied to me, wickedly seeking to put enmity
between me and my friend, may the pest smite you, and may you perish
unforgiven of man and God!'
Petronilla blanched not. For one instant he glared at her, and was
gone.
CHAPTER XII
HELIODORA
Marcian's abode was in the Via Lata, the thoroughfare which ran
straight and broad, directly northwards, from the Capitoline Hill to
the Flaminian Gate. Hard by were the headquarters of the city watch,
a vast building, now tenanted by a few functionaries whose authority
had fallen into contempt; and that long colonnade of Hadrian, called
the Septa, where merchants once exposed their jewels and fabrics to
the crowd of sauntering wealthy, and where nowadays a few vendors of
slaves did their business amid the crumbling columns. Surrounded by
these monuments of antiquity, the few private residences still
inhabited had a dreary, if not a mean, aspect. Some of them--and
Marcian's dwelling was one--had been built in latter times with
material taken from temple or portico or palace in ruins; thus they
combined richness of detail with insignificant or clumsy
architecture.
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