nd
through the grove. Then he saw ahead of him a fern thicket, and the
brook flashing its water beyond. In his recollection a bridge had here
crossed the streamlet. It had been removed. Just across, swayed the
huge cypress. Drusus stepped forward. At last! He pushed carefully
through the thicket, making only a little noise, and glanced across
the brook.

There were ferns all around the cypress. Ivies twined about its trunk.
On the bank the green turf looked dry, but cool. Just under the tree
the brook broke into a miniature cascade, and went rippling down in a
score of pygmy, sparkling waterfalls. On a tiny promontory a marble
nymph, a fine bit of Greek sculpture, was pouring, without respite,
from a water-urn into the gurgling flood. But Drusus did not gaze at
the nymph. Close beside the image, half lying, half sitting, in an
abandon only to be produced by a belief that she was quite alone,
rested a young woman. It was Cornelia.

Drusus had made no disturbance, and the object on which he fastened
his eyes had not been in the least stirred out of a rather deep
reverie. He stood for a while half bashful, half contemplative.
Cornelia had taken off her shoes and let her little white feet trail
down into the water. She wore only her white tunic, and had pushed it
back so that her arms were almost bare. At the moment she was resting
lazily on one elbow, and gazing abstractedly up at the moving ocean of
green overhead. She was only sixteen; but in the warm Italian clime
that age had brought her to maturity. No one would have said that she
was beautiful, from the point of view of mere softly sensuous Greek
beauty. Rather, she was handsome, as became the daughter of Cornelii
and Claudii. She was tall; her hair, which was bound in a plain knot
on the back of her head, was dark--almost black; her eyes were large,
grey, lustrous, and on occasion could be proud and angry. Yet with it
all she was pretty--pretty, said Drusus to himself, as any girl he had
seen in Athens. For there were coy dimples in her delicate little
chin, her finely chiselled features were not angular, while her cheeks
were aglow with a healthy colour that needed no rouge to heighten. In
short, Cornelia, like Drusus, was a Roman; and Drusus saw that she was
a Roman, and was glad.

Presently something broke the reverie. Cornelia's eyes dropped from
the treetops, and lighted up with attention. One glance across the
brook into the fern thicket; then one irrepres