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WHILE some stayed behind to share with the priests the funeral banquet, / Ione and her handmaids took homeward their melancholy way. And now (the / last duties to her brother performed) her mind awoke from its / absorption, and she thought of her allianced, and the dread charge / against him. Not -- as we have before said -- attaching even a momentary / belief to the unnatural accusation, but nursing the darkest suspicion / against Arbaces, she felt that justice to her lover and to her murdered / relative demanded her to seek the praetor, and communicate her / impression, unsupported as it might be. Questioning her maidens, who / had hitherto -- kindly anxious, as I have said, to save her the additional / agony -- refrained from informing her of the state of Glaucus, she learned / that he had been dangerously ill: that he was in custody, under the roof / of Sallust; that the day of his trial was appointed.
'Averting gods,' she exclaimed; 'and have I been so long forgetful of / him? Have I seemed to shun him? O! let me hasten to do him justice -- to / show that I, the nearest relative of the dead, believe him innocent of / the charge. Quick! quick! let us fly. Let me soothe -- tend -- cheer him! / and if they will not believe me; if they will not lead to my conviction; / if they sentence him to exile or to death, let me share the sentence / with him!'