Cecilia Metella was looking down upon us.  We have heard much of her in these latter days, and yet we know nothing about her, nor can conceive why she was honoured with a bigger tomb than any other Roman matron.  There were those then among our party who believed that she might still come back among us, and with due assistance from some cognate susceptible spirit, explain to us the cause of her widowed husband’s liberality.  Alas, alas! if we may judge of the Romans by ourselves, the true reason for such sepulchral grandeur would redound little to the credit of the lady Cecilia Metella herself, or to that of Crassus, her bereaved and desolate lord.

She did not come among us on the occasion of this banquet, possibly because we had no tables there to turn in preparation for her presence; but, had she done so, she could not have been more eloquent of things of the other world than was Mrs. Talboys.  I have said that Mrs. Talboys’ eye never glanced more brightly after a glass of champagne, but I am inclined to think that on this occasion it may have done so.  O’Brien enacted Ganymede, and was, perhaps, more liberal than other latter-day Ganymedes, to whose services Mrs. Talboys had been accustomed.  Let it not, however, be suspected by any one that she exceeded the limits of a discreet joyousness.  By no means!  The generous wine penetrated, perhaps, to some inner cells of her heart, and brought forth thoughts in sparkling words, which otherwise might have remained concealed; but there was nothing in what she thought or spoke calculated to give umbrage either to an anchorite or to a vestal.  A word or two she said or sung about the flowing bowl, and once she called for Falernian; but beyond this her converse was chiefly of the rights of man and the weakness of women; of the iron ages that were past, and of the golden time that was to come.

She called a toast and drank to the hopes of the latter historians of the nineteenth century.  Then it was that she bade O’Brien “Fill high the bowl with Samian wine.”  The Irishman took her at her word, and she raised the bumper, and waved it over her head before she put it to her lips.  I am bound to declare that she did not spill a drop.  “The true ‘Falernian grape,’” she said, as she deposited the empty beaker on the grass beneath her elbow.  Viler champagne I do not think I ever swallowed; but it was the theory of the wine, not its palpable body present there, as it were, in the flesh, which inspired her.  There was really something grand about her on that occasion, and her enthusiasm almost amounted to reality.

Mackinnon was amused, and encouraged her, as, I must confess, did I also.  Mrs. Mackinnon made useless little signs to her husband, really fearing that the Falernian would do its good offices too thoroughly.  My wife, getting me apart as I walked round the circle distributing viands, remarked that “the woman was a fool, and would disgrace herself.”  But I observed that after the disposal of that bumper she worshipped the rosy god in theory only, and therefore saw no occasion to interfere.  “Come, Bacchus,” she said; “and come, Silenus, if thou wilt; I know that ye are hovering round the graves of your departed favourites.  And ye, too, nymphs of Egeria,” and she pointed to the classic grove which was all but close to us as we sat there.  “In olden days ye did not always despise the abodes of men.  But why should we invoke the presence of the gods,—we, who can become godlike ourselves!  We ourselves are the deities of the present age.  For us shall the tables be spread with ambrosia; for us shall the nectar flow.”

Upon the whole it was very good fooling,—for awhile; and as soon as we were tired of it we arose from our seats, and began to stroll about the place.  It was beginning to be a little dusk, and somewhat cool, but the evening air was pleasant, and the ladies, putting on their shawls, did not seem inclined at once to get into the carriages.  At any rate, Mrs. Talboys was not so inclined, for she started down the hill towards the long low wall of the old Roman circus at the bottom; and O’Brien, close at her elbow, started with her.

“Ida, my dear, you had better remain here,” she said to her daughter; “you will be tired if you come as far as we are going.”

“Oh, no, mamma, I shall not,” said Ida.  “You get tired much quicker than I do.”

“Oh, yes, you will; besides I do not wish you to come.”  There was an end of it for Ida, and Mrs. Talboys and O’Brien walked off together, while we all looked into each other’s faces.

“It would be a charity to go with them,” said Mackinnon.

“Do you be charitable, then,” said his wife.

“It should be a lady,” said he.

“It is a pity that the mother of the spotless cherubim is not here for the occasion,” said she.  “I hardly think that any one less gifted will undertake such a self sacrifice.”  Any attempt of the kind would, however, now have been too late, for they were already at the bottom of the hill.  O’Brien had certainly drunk freely of the pernicious contents of those long-necked bottles; and though no one could fairly accuse him of being tipsy, nevertheless that which might have made others drunk had made him bold, and he dared to do—perhaps more than might become a man.  If under any circumstances he could be fool enough to make an avowal of love to Mrs. Talboys, he might be expected, as we all thought, to do it now.

We watched them as they made for a gap in the wall which led through into the large enclosed space of the old circus.  It had been an arena for chariot games, and they had gone down with the avowed purpose of searching where might have been the meta, and ascertaining how the drivers could have turned when at their full speed.  For awhile we had heard their voices,—or rather her voice especially.  “The heart of a man, O’Brien, should suffice for all emergencies,” we had heard her say.  She had assumed a strange habit of calling men by their simple names, as men address each other.  When she did this to Mackinnon, who was much older than herself, we had been all amused by it, and, other ladies of our party had taken to call him “Mackinnon” when Mrs. Talboys was not by; but we had felt the comedy to be less safe with O’Brien, especially when, on one occasion, we heard him address her as Arabella.  She did not seem to be in any way struck by his doing so, and we supposed, therefore, that it had become frequent between them.  What reply he made at the moment about the heart of a man I do not know;—and then in a few minutes they disappeared through the gap in the wall.

None of us followed them, though it would have seemed the most natural thing in the world to do so had nothing out of the way been expected.  As it was we remained there round the tomb quizzing the little foibles of our dear friend, and hoping that O’Brien would be quick in what he was doing.  That he would undoubtedly get a slap in the face—metaphorically—we all felt certain, for none of us doubted the rigid propriety of the lady’s intentions.  Some of us strolled into the buildings, and some of us got out on to the road; but we all of us were thinking that O’Brien was very slow a considerable time before we saw Mrs. Talboys reappear through the gap.

At last, however, she was there, and we at once saw that she was alone.  She came on, breasting the hill with quick steps, and when she drew near we could see that there was a frown as of injured majesty on her brow.  Mackinnon and his wife went forward to meet her.  If she were really in trouble it would be fitting in some way to assist her; and of all women Mrs. Mackinnon was the last to see another woman suffer from ill-usage without attempting to aid her.  “I certainly never liked her,” Mrs. Mackinnon said afterwards; “but I was bound to go and hear her tale, when she really had a tale to tell.”

And Mrs. Talboys now had a tale to tell,—if she chose to tell