1830.] a Tale of the Ancient Britons. 275 



Sergius shook his head distrustingly. " What, when her husband has 

 already escaped our clutches, and is probably the very life of this rebel- 

 lion ? Strange infatuation ! Thank Heaven, I am no courtier ; my 

 heart would be ever on my lips." 



" You doubt this heroine's sincerity," whispered Vitellius ; " perhaps 

 you are not the only one here who feels the same distrust. Cartismandua, 

 from all I have been able to glean respecting her character, was always 

 famous for her powers of intrigue. She is here, I suspect, less as a 

 friend of Messalina than as a spy of the Silures. But time will shew. 

 At court, one should hear all, and say nothing ;" with which words, the 

 majority of the guests the emperor and empress at their head having 

 by this time taken their departure, the two adventurers drank their part- 

 ing cup in honour of Mercury, and retired to their separate abodes. 

 Vitellius quitted the palace at once ; but Sergius lingered behind, striv- 

 ing, as with rapid and vacillating footsteps he paced up and down the 

 deserted hall, to account for the strange appearance of Cartismandua. 

 Vain, however, were his endeavours; for the more he attempted to 

 fathom it, the deeper became the mystery. An hour had thus passed 

 away, when finding all his labour fruitless, he left the hall, trusting to 

 the chapter of accidents to clear up all that now appeared inexplicable. 



Just as he reached the outer vestibule, a cry, as from some person: 

 whose voice was stifled, struck on his ear. He listened. The sound 

 was repeated: it proceeded evidently from one in agony. While 

 hesitating whether or not to rush to the sufferer's assistance, a groan, 

 deeper and louder than the .former, decided him ; and he passed 

 swiftly but silently down a long winding passage, in the direction 

 whence the noise issued. At the extremity of this passage was a 

 spacious bed-chamber, the door of which stood ajar. Sergius here made 

 a halt, and, after looking cautiously round to satisfy himself that he was 

 unwatched, pushed the door a little aside, and peeped in. What a 

 spectacle presented itself to his gaze ! Stretched at full length on the 

 bed, his hands clenched, his mouth drawn down, his eyes staring wildly 

 in the last agonies of convulsion, lay the Emperor Claudius him whom 

 Sergius, but a few short hours before, had seen presiding at the ban- 

 quet in all the flush of health, and all the pride of regal magnificence. 

 On one side of him stood Messalina, pale ghastly horror-stricken 

 but with the glare of a demon in her eye; and on the other, a yellow, 

 shrivelled old woman, who held a vial in her left hand, while with the 

 right she clutched the dead emperor with a tiger-like ferocity by the 

 throat. Transfixed by this horrid vision, Sergius wholly lost his self- 

 control. Though a soldier, he was no murderer ; and there was a some- 

 thing in the malignant, the fiendish aspect of the two wretches before 

 him that made his very flesh creep. 



Scarcely knowing what he was about, he stood motionless as a statue. 

 Presently, he heard footseps advancing towards him. Nearer they came 

 nearer nearer still and already they were within a yard of the 

 door. An instant, it was flung wide open, and the intruder detected ! 

 Messalina was the first to make the discovery. Her countenance 

 blazed with uncontrollable passion. After a pause, during which 

 each fixed an anxious gaze on the other, " Hah ! hah !" she said, 

 with a frantic laugh, " you have, then, found out that I am a murderess ! 

 True, I am the assassin of that thing which rots before you. I glory 

 in the deed. He stood between me and my gratification ; he even medi- 



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