e Lady Cornelia is in the Corinthian hall," announced the slave who
carried in the news of his coming, "and there she awaits you."

Lucius, nothing loth, followed the servant. A moment and he was in the
large room. It was empty. The great marble pillars rose cold and
magnificent in four stately rows, on all sides of the high-vaulted
apartment. On the walls Cupids and blithesome nymphs were careering in
fresco. The floor was soft with carpets. A dull scent of burning
incense from a little brazier, smoking before a bronze Minerva, in one
corner of the room, hung heavy on the air. The sun was shining warm
and bright without, but the windows of the hall were small and high
and the shutters also were drawn. Everything was cool, still, and
dark. Only through a single aperture shot a clear ray of sunlight, and
stretched in a radiant bar across the gaudy carpets.

Lucius stumbled, half groping, into a chair, and seated himself.
Cornelia had never received him thus before. What was she preparing?
Another moment and Lentulus Crus entered the darkened hall.

"_Perpol!_ Ahenobarbus," he cried, as he came across his prospective
nephew-in-law, "what can Cornelia be wanting of us both? And in this
place? I can't imagine. Ah! Those were strange doings yesterday up in
Praeneste. I would hardly have put on mourning if Drusus had been
ferried over the Styx; but it was a bold way to attack him. I don't
know that he has an enemy in the world except myself, and I can bide
my time and pay off old scores at leisure. Who could have been back of
Dumnorix when he blundered so evidently?"

Ahenobarbus felt that it was hardly possible Lentulus would condemn
his plot very severely; but he replied diplomatically:--

"One has always plenty of enemies."

"_Mehercle!_ of course," laughed the consul-elect, "what would life be
without the pleasure of revenge! But why does my niece keep us
waiting? Jupiter, what can she want of us?"

"Uncle, Lucius, I am here." And before them, standing illumined in the
panel of sunlight, stood Cornelia. Ahenobarbus had never seen her so
beautiful before. She wore a flowing violet-tinted stola, that tumbled
in soft, silky flounces down to her ankles, and from beneath it peered
the tint of her shapely feet bound to thin sandals by bright red
ribbons. Her bare rounded arms were clasped above and below the elbow
and at the wrists by circlets shaped as coiled serpents, whose eyes
were gleaming rubies. At her white throa