Cornelia was left to herself, and spent the next hour in a division of labour before her silver wall-mirror, dressing—­something which was sufficiently troublesome for her, accustomed to the services of a bevy of maids—­and at the window, gazing toward Puteoli for the fishing-boat that seemed never in sight.  At last the toilet was completed to her satisfaction.  Cornelia surveyed herself in her best silken purple flounced stola, thrust the last pin into her hair, and confined it all in a net of golden thread.  Roman maidens were not as a rule taught to be modest about their charms, and Cornelia, with perfect frankness, said aloud to herself, “You are so beautiful that Drusus can’t help loving you;” and with this candid confession, she was again on the terrace, straining her eyes toward Puteoli.  Boats came, boats went, but there was none that approached the villa; and Cornelia began to harbour dark thoughts against Cassandra.

“If the wretched woman had played false to her mistress again—­” but the threat was never formulated.  There was a chink and click of a pair of oars moving on their thole-pins.  For an instant a skiff was visible at the foot of the embankment; two occupants were in it.  The boat disappeared under the friendly cover of the protecting sea-wall of the lower terrace.  There was a little landing-place here, with a few steps leading upward, where now and then a yacht was moored.  The embankment shut off this tiny wharf from view on either side.  Cornelia dared not leave the upper terrace.  Her heart beat faster and faster.  Below she heard the slap, slap, of the waves on the sea-wall, and a rattle of rings and ropes as some skiff was being made fast.  An instant more and Drusus was coming, with quick, athletic bounds, up the stairway to the second terrace.  It was he! she saw him!  In her eyes he was everything in physique and virile beauty that a maiden of the Republic could desire!  The bitterness and waiting of months were worth the blessedness of the instant.  Cornelia never knew what Drusus said to her, or what she said to him.  She only knew that he was holding her in his strong arms and gazing into her eyes; while the hearts of both talked to one another so fast that they had neither time nor need for words.  They were happy, happy!  Long it was before their utterance passed beyond the merest words of endearment; longer still before they were composed enough for Cornelia to listen to Drusus while he gave his own account of Mamercus’s heroic resistance to Dumnorix’s gang at Praeneste; and told of his own visit to Ravenna, of his intense admiration for the proconsul of the two Gauls; and of how he had come to Puteoli and opened communications with Cassandra, through Cappadox, the trusty body-servant who in the guise of a fisherman was waiting in the boat below.

“And as Homer puts it, so with us,” cried Cornelia, at length:  “’And so the pair had joy in happy love, and joyed in talking too, and each relating; she, the royal lady, what she had endured at home, watching the wasteful throng of suitors; and he, high-born Odysseus, what miseries he brought on other men, and bore himself in anguish;—­all he told, and she was glad to hear.’”