You set me thinking."
After the second cockcrow, since dawn was not now far away, we fell to
talking of the future.
"I shan't marry anybody, ever, except you, dear!" she promised, without my
asking it and again and again: "I'll remain a widow until I die unless we
outlive Commodus, and Tanno and I succeed in having you rehabilitated. I
have many consolations in my wealth and social position and friends."
"And suitors," I put in, mimicking her tone when she bantered me about
Marcia.
"And suitors!" she replied. "Caius, I love you, and I'll never marry
anyone else, but I do love attention. I love to keep a dozen good catches
dangling about me; their wooings and their gifts and their behavior
generally are no end of good fun. And it's good fun to have half the
marriageable belles furious with me. I cannot help encouraging any man, or
even lad, who moons about after me. But you have never had any reason to
be jealous, you have none now, you never will have."
I expressed my faith in her the best I could.
"You are a dear, dear boy," she said, "and it is good of you not to be
jealous, even when you have so little reason to be jealous. I have much
more. Suppose I raged about Nebris or Septima?"
I tried to change the subject and succeeded, when I suggested that we must
plan what we were to do at dawn and in the future.
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