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TITUS AND THE VESTAL 283
The right of the vestals was well known
conduct of Titus.
in Rome, though it was rarely used, for they were not often
seen in the streets. But it was understood that, in order to
be valid, the meeting of vestal and criminal must be accidental.
Lselia would have been seriously displeased had she
known that she was in reality the victim of a little plot on
the part of her boy-friend, and Titus was in some trepidation
till he had hurried the vestal past the prisoner, and to the
choice book-stall which was spread with the purple bindings
of Atrectus. There she not only purchased for him the copy
of Virgil, but, as he had quoted Seneca, she also gave him a
radiant little volume of some of his treatises from the shop
of his bookseller, Dorus, hard by. When she gave him this
second gift the delighted youth
felt a little
compunction at his
manoeuvre.
No one knew what he had done ; but, when he narrated
the incident to Pudens, the tribune suspected the real state of
the case, for the boy's eye twinkled suspiciously as he told his
little story with the most innocent candour.