I have been very miserable these past two days, but this afternoon will be better.  Come and visit me and my uncle, for there are several things I would be glad to say before you both.  Farewell.”

“I think,” remarked Lucius to himself, “that the girl wants to have the wedding-day hastened.  I know of nothing else to make her desire both Lentulus and myself at once.  I want to see her alone.  Well, I cannot complain.  I’ll have Drusus’s bride, even if I can’t have his money or his life.”

And so deliberating, he put on his finest saffron-tinted synthesis, his most elegant set of rings, his newest pair of black shoes,[120] and spent half an hour with his hairdresser; and thus habited he repaired to the house of the Lentuli.

  [120] Black shoes were worn as a sort of badge by equites.

“The 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?”