marriage. A most eligible proposal, I say. Perhaps he is a little old, about five years younger than myself. But that’s of no consequence. I mentioned the matter to her. She did not say much, but, of course, a girl must seem to hold back. I suggested that the marriage should take place next week—for I should dearly like to be at home in time for the barley harvest. That roused her. Of course she said that she had no clothes. I don’t know about that—she always seems to me to look very nice—but I should not like to annoy her, for she is a dear, good girl, and I gave her another month. It’s an excellent arrangement—don’t you think so?”

[Pg 25]

Hippocles muttered a few words of assent; but long before the month was out, he and his Pontia were on their way to Athens.

The marriage and the settlement in Athens had taken place twenty-one years before the time of which I am writing. Two children had been born, a son and a[Pg 26] daughter. The son had fallen, not many months before, at the battle of Notium[10] and the death of the mother, who had been in feeble health, had soon followed. The daughter, to whom her parents had given the name of Hermione, had just completed her sixteenth year.

[Pg 26]

Hermione united in herself some of the happiest characteristics of the two races from which she sprang. Her father was a Greek of the Greeks. Poseidonia had been founded by Dorian settlers from Sybaris, who could not contrive to live on good terms with the Achaean Greeks that had become the predominant element in that city; and Hippocles, who claimed descent from the Messenian kings, yielded to none in nobility of birth. A purer type of the genuine Hellenes it would have been impossible to find. Pontia brought from the Lucanian hills, among which she had been reared, some of the best qualities, moral and physical, of the Italian race. The simplicity, frugality, and temperance which then and long after distinguished rural Italy, were to be seen in her united with a singular feminine charm not so often found among that somewhat rude population; until the close air of the Piraeus, ill-suited to a daughter of the hills, sapped her constitution, she had had a frame magnificently healthy and strong. To the daughter the climate which had shortened her mother’s days, happily did no harm. It was in fact her native air, and she throve in it. She was still undeveloped, for she had only just completed her sixteenth year; but she gave promise of remarkable beauty, and indeed, the promise was[Pg 27] already more than half fulfilled. When she had performed the duty, sometimes imposed on the 

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