beyond the occasion for which it was wanted. Her father received him, and told him that his daughter had broken down under the strain. “I was cowardly enough,” he said, “yesterday to rest upon her strength when I should have summoned up my own. The gods grant that I may not have taxed it overmuch, and that I may not lose both my children. I have learned that I ought not to have grudged my son to the city which has been a second mother to me; if only I have not learnt it at too terrible a price.” Callias had to leave[Pg 29] Athens on the next day to rejoin the fleet, but he had the satisfaction of hearing before his departure that Hermione was on a fair way to recovery. Since then he had not been in Athens. [Pg 28] [Pg 29] [Pg 30] [Pg 30] CHAPTER IV. A COUNCIL. The house of Hippocles was on a smaller scale than might have seemed suitable to his vast wealth. The fact was that both he and his daughter had simple tastes. They had a special dislike to the enormous establishments of slaves which it was the fashion for rich Athenians, whether of native or of foreign birth, to maintain. In each division of the house—for, it was divided after the usual Greek fashion, into two “apartments,” to use that word in its proper sense, belonging respectively to the men and the women[12]—there were but three or four inmates besides the master and mistress. Hippocles had his house steward and his personal attendant, both older than himself, long since emancipated, who had accompanied him from his Italian home, and a lad of seventeen, who was still a slave, but who, if he conducted himself well, would certainly earn his freedom by the time that he had reached the age of thirty. Hermione’s establishment, on the other hand, consisted of a lady who had just exchanged the post of governess, now no longer necessary, for that of companion or duenna, a housekeeper, and two domestics who may be described by the modern terms of[Pg 31] lady’s-maid and house-maid. Stephanion, the companion, was of pure Athenian descent. She belonged to one of the many families which had been reduced to poverty by
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