“Fortune has been kind to us,” said he, smiling.

“Vesta has protected us,” said Fabia, bowing her head.

Caesar cast a single inquiring, keen glance at the Vestal.

“Your excellency doubts the omnipotence of the goddess,” continued she, looking him steadily in the face.

“That a power has protected you,” was his answer, “I am the last to deny.”

But the Imperator and Drusus were exchanging glances; that a woman of the intelligence of Fabia could believe in the regular, personal intervention of the Deity in human affairs was to them, not an absurdity, but a mystery unfathomable.

And so, safe-guarded by the troops, they rode back to the palace, where the preparations for defence were ready, and all were awaiting the onset of Achillas.  The weary men on the walls cheered as the carriages with their precious burdens rolled in at the gate; and cheered again for Drusus and his eighteen who had taught the Alexandrian rabble how Roman steel could bite.  But Drusus himself was sad when he thought of the twelve good men that he had left behind—­who need not have been sacrificed but for his headlong rashness.

And how had the mob come to attack the house of Cleomenes?  It was a long story, but in a few words probably this.  Pratinas had come and demanded of Cleomenes that he surrender the ladies (doubtless because they would be useful hostages) to go with him to Achillas.  Cleomenes had refused, the more especially as Cornelia adjured him not to deliver them over to the clutches of such a creature; and Pratinas went away full of anger and threatenings.  How he came to be in Alexandria, and had returned so soon from Achillas’s forces, if he had indeed gone to Achillas, was neither clear nor important.  But that he had excited the mob to assail Cleomenes’s mansion needed no great proof.  Cleomenes himself had seen his artful fellow-countryman surveying the riot from a housetop, though doubtless he had kept at a prudent distance during the fighting.

So ended that exciting day, or rather that night.  It was Cleopatra who with her own hands laid the bandages on Cornelia’s wounded shoulder, but the hurt was not serious; only, as Drusus laughingly assured her, it was an honourable scar, as became the descendant of so many fighting Claudii and Cornelii.

“Ah! delectissime,” replied she, “it isn’t the hurt that gives me pain; it is that I was frightened—­frightened when you were acting like one of the Heroes!”

“Mehercle!” laughed Drusus, before he left her to snatch a few hours of well-earned rest and see to the dressing of his own bruises, “I would not blame a veteran for being panic-struck in that melee, if he didn’t have a chance to swing a weapon and so keep his heart from standing still.”

II