Page:The Song of the Sirens.djvu/189

 family, and if you were, nobody except your own blood kin would know or care. Nobody pays any attention to such things. No more do I. You know well that is not why I am incensed."

"If not, then why, in Castor's name?" Mucia queried amazedly.

"It should be unnecessary," said Pompeia coldly, "and it is probably useless, to point out to you the indelicacy of driving out here in a closed carriage with a man who is not your husband. You must have started long before daybreak."

"It seems to escape you," Mucia retorted indignantly, "that you have yourself done precisely the same thing."

"Not precisely nor nearly," Pompeia argued hotly. "I am a widow. I came with my cousin, who grew up with me and whom no one has ever suspected of being an admirer or gallant of mine. Your escort was a man wholly unrelated to you in any way, whose attentions to you have been the talk of Rome for a year."

"Clodius," Mucia disclaimed, "is my husband's friend."

"Clodius," Pompeia rejoined, "is nobody's friend. He is his own worst enemy; his country's worst enemy; your worst enemy, if you but knew it; and beyond peradventure, your husband's worst enemy."