The Last Days of Pompeii, page 109 by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
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'I paid six sestertia for her, she is worth twelve now,' muttered Stratonice.
'You shall have twenty; come to the magistrates at once, and then to my house for your money.'
'I would not have sold the dear girl for a hundred but to oblige noble Clodius,' said Burbo, whiningly. 'And you will speak to Pansa about the place of designator at the amphitheatre, noble Clodius? it would just suit me.'
'Thou shalt have it,' said Clodius; adding in a whisper to Burbo, 'Yon Greek can make your fortune; money runs through him like a sieve: mark to-day with white chalk, my Priam.'
'An dabis?' said Glaucus, in the formal question of sale and barter.
'Dabitur,' answered Burbo.
'Then, then, I am to go with you--with you? O happiness!' murmured Nydia.
'Pretty one, yes; and thy hardest task henceforth shall be to sing thy Grecian hymns to the loveliest lady in Pompeii.'
The girl sprang from his clasp; a change came over her whole face, bright the instant before; she sighed heavily, and then once more taking his hand, she said:
'I thought I was to go to your house?'
'And so thou shalt for the present; come, we lose time.'
Chapter IV
THE RIVAL OF GLAUCUS PRESSES ONWARD IN THE RACE.
IONE was one of those brilliant characters which, but once or twice, flash across our career. She united in the highest perfection the rarest of earthly gifts--Genius and Beauty. No one ever possessed superior intellectual qualities without knowing them--the alliteration of modesty and merit is pretty enough, but where merit is great, the veil of that modesty you admire never disguises its extent from its possessor. It is the proud consciousness of certain qualities that it cannot reveal to the everyday world, that gives to genius that shy, and reserved, and troubled air, which puzzles and flatters you when you encounter it.
Ione, then, knew her genius; but, with that charming versatility