One or two carved wooden cupboards for books completed the furnishings.
There were only two persons in the room.

One of them,--a handsome young Hellene, evidently a freedman, was sitting on a low chair with an open roll before him.

His companion half sat and half lay on a divan near by.

This second person was a man of height unusual to Italians of his day; his cheeks were pale and a little sunken; his dark eyes were warm, penetrating; his mouth and chin mobile and even affable, but not a line suggested weakness.

The forehead was high, massive, and was exaggerated by a semi-baldness which was only partially concealed by combing the dark, grey-streaked hair forward.
He was reclining; if he had arisen he would have displayed a frame at once to be called soldierly, though spare and hardly powerful.