noon
Meanwhile Arbaces pursued his slow and stately way to the house of Ione . As he entered the tablinum , he heard a voice from the porticoes of the peristyle beyond , which , musical as it was , sounded displeasingly on his ear -- it was the voice of the young and beautiful Glaucus , and for the first time an involuntary thrill of jealousy shot through the breast of the Egyptian . On entering the peristyle , he found Glaucus seated by the side of Ione . The fountain in the odorous garden cast up its silver spray in the air , and kept a delicious coolness in the midst of the sultry noon . The handmaids , almost invariably attendant on Ione , who with her freedom of life preserved the most delicate modesty , sat at a little distance ; by the feet of Glaucus lay the lyre on which he had been playing to Ione one of the Lesbian airs . The scene -- the group before Arbaces , was stamped by that peculiar and refined ideality of poesy which we yet , not erroneously , imagine to be the distinction of the ancients -- the marble columns , the vases of flowers , the statue , white and tranquil , closing every vista ; and , above all , the two living forms , from which a sculptor might have caught either inspiration or despair ! Arbaces , pausing for a moment , gazed on the pair with a brow from which all the usual stern serenity had fled ; he recovered himself by an effort , and slowly approached them , but with a step so soft and echoless , that even the attendants heard him not ; much less Ione and her lover .