Lucia Claudia blushed deeply, and, extending the delicate hand that held the holy Gospel, timidly, yet beseechingly, regarded Adonijah. How beautiful was that tenderness, how frank and yet how chastened by modest dignity was that avowal! Adonijah was almost more than man to resist it.

"Tempt me not, Lucia,” he replied, “to my undoing; the bribe is mighty, but I am strong in faith. Well is it for thee that thou art no daughter of my people, for then in obedience to a tremendous law my hand must be first upon thee to cast the murderous stone, though thou wert the wife of my own bosom, or the friend dearer than my own soul."

He repulsed the hand she proffered, and, snatching the vellum scrolls Lucia Claudia held towards him, trampled them scornfully beneath his feet.

"Cruel Adonijah, and is it thus we part? Oh, I had hoped that the preaching of the word would have melted away these proud and stubborn thoughts. Why have you frequented our midnight assemblies, why has your shadow haunted me, unless it were to pass between me and my God?"

Adonijah laughed bitterly; that scornful laugh thrilled painfully from the ears of Lucia to her heart. Could he betray her—could his stern integrity stoop to a measure so infinitely base and unworthy of him? Oh no! woman's trusting love forbade a thought so wild.

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'Adonijah," said she, "you were kinder to the priestess of Vesta than to the worshipper of the true God."

"Oh that you were still the idolatress-the heathen priestess-or anything but an apostate from Jehovah! Go, leave me, guileful Gentile; leave me in solitude and misery to curse the day when first a true Israelite gazed on your fatal form, and, all-forgetful of his creed, madly doted upon the daughter of the stranger." With these words Adonijah quitted the presence of the distressed and weeping Lucia Claudia.

CHAPTER XIII.

"No place could be better calculated to answer all the pur. poses of the primitive and persecuted Christians, than the subterraneous caverns of the Arenaria."

THE measure Lucia Claudia was compelled to adopt was one of necessity rather than choice. She would willingly have remained in her brother's house, if that house had been a safe abode for a virtuous woman. If she could have kept the retirement of her chamber inviolate, the Christian would not have considered it an imperative duty to quit the protection of her natural guardian.

While she still wore the vestal habit, no one dared utter a word to wound her pure and spotless virtue; but when the sacerdotal profession became inconsistent with her worship of the God of Abraham, and she abandoned the sacred robes, each sensual guest of Julius Claudius seemed to forget the deference he

once had paid to the vestal sister of his friend, and openly congratulated her upon her change of life. Atheists and scoffers had hitherto been unable to disengage their minds from the chain superstition had woven round their earlier years. Now that restraint was gone, and, incapable of appreciating the motives that had influenced Lucia Claudia, even if they had known them, they daringly imputed them to guilt, and considered her as something more profane and lost to virtue than themselves. Nymphidius Sabinus alone still regarded Lucia Claudia as the purest of her sex. At first he had suspected that she had quitted her lofty position to espouse some favoured patrician, but he vainly watched for some confirmation of his suspicions. To him she appeared as icily chaste, as vestal-like, as inaccessible, as when she wore the consecrated robes of the dedicated virgin. The idea that she was a Christian suddenly entered his mind. He remembered that memorable day when she had claimed the privilege of her order to save a Christian pastor. It was clear to him that the woman he adored was a secret disciple or Linus, Bishop of Rome. It was strange that

he had not discovered this before. His knowledge of her secret would render him the master of her destiny. For her creed he cared not, so that she were but his wife. He communicated his suspicions to Julius Claudius, who seemed convinced of their truth. It was then agreed between them that a removal to Tivoli would preclude Lucia Claudia from taking counsel with the sect whose tenets she had embraced. Nymphidius was to intimidate her into an acceptance of his suit, in which he was to be seconded by his friend. The fears of a timid young woman they considered would lead her to a marriage that she denied to his love. Ignorant of these devices against her peace, Lucia Claudia had listened in indignant silence, while on the way to Tivoli, to the artful hints thrown out from time to time by her brother Julius, who daringly insinuated that a marriage with the son of the bondwoman, Nymphidius, could alone restore her tarnished reputation. The feeble-minded Antonia, the wife of Julius, took that opportunity of repeating all the idle reports in circulation in Rome respecting Lucia Claudia's abandonment of her vestal life. Among other things