world!"

[162] Riches and strength.

When Agias fell asleep that night, or rather that morning, on a hard
seaman's pallet, two names were stirring in his heart, names
inextricably connected: Cornelia, whom he had promised Quintus Drusus
to save from Ahenobarbus's clutches, and Artemisia. In the morning the
yacht, having run her sixteen miles to Ostia, stood out to sea, naught
hindering.

* * * * *

It was two months later when Quintus Drusus reentered Rome, no more a
fugitive, but a trusted staff officer of the lawfully appointed
dictator Julius Caesar. He had taken part in a desperate struggle
around Corfinium, where his general had cut off and captured the army
with which Domitius had aimed to check his advance. Drusus had been
severely wounded, and had not recovered in time to participate in the
futile siege of Brundusium, when Caesar vainly strove to prevent
Pompeius's flight across the sea to Greece. Soon as he was
convalescent, the young officer had hurried away to Rome; and there he
was met by a story concerning his aunt, whereof no rational
explanation seemed possible. And when, upon this mystery, was added a
tale he received from Baiae, he marvelled, yet dreaded, the more.

Chapter XIX

The Hospitality of Demetrius

I

While grave senators were contending, tribunes haranguing, imperators
girding on the sword, legions marching, cohorts clashing,--while all
this history was being made in the outside world, Cornelia, very
desolate, very lonely, was enduring her imprisonment at Baiae.

If she had had manacles on her wrists and fetters on her feet, she
would not have been the more a prisoner. Lentulus Crus had determined,
with the same grim tenacity of purpose which led him to plunge a world
into war, that his niece should comply with his will and marry Lucius
Ahenobarbus. He sent down to Baiae, Phaon,--the evil-eyed freedman of
Ahenobarbus,--and gave to that worthy full power to do anything he
wished to break the will of his prospective patroness. Cassandra had
been taken away from Cornelia--she could not learn so much as whether
the woman had been scourged to death for arranging the interview with
Drusus, or no. Two ill-favoured slatternly Gallic maids, the scourings
of the Puteoli slave-market, had been forced upon Cornelia as her
attendants--creatures who stood in abject fear of the whip of Phaon,
and who obeyed his mandates to the letter. Cornelia was never