and all her property be given to Lucius, the second son of my dearly loved friend, Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus,’ Now I think you will begin to see why Quintus Drusus’s affairs interest me a little.  If he refuse to marry Cornelia before he be five-and-twenty, she falls to me.  But I understand that Lentulus, her uncle, is badly in debt, and her dowry won’t be much.  But if Drusus is not married to her, and die before he is twenty-five, his property is hers and she is mine. Do you understand why I have a little grudge against him?”

“For what?” cried Laeca, with breathless interest.

“For living!” sighed Ahenobarbus, hopelessly.

The handsome face of Pratinas was a study.  His nostrils dilated; his lips quivered; his eyes were bright and keen with what evidently passed in his mind for a great discovery.

“Eureka!” cried the Greek, clapping his hands.  “My dear Lucius, let me congratulate you!  You are saved!”

“What?” exclaimed the young man, starting up.

“You are saved!” repeated Pratinas, all animation.  “Drusus’s sesterces shall be yours!  Every one of them!”

Lucius Ahenobarbus was a debauchee, a mere creature of pleasure, without principle or character; but even he had a revulsion of spirit at the hardly masked proposal of the enthusiastic Greek.  He flushed in spite of the wine, then turned pale, then stammered, “Don’t mention such a thing, Pratinas.  I was never Drusus’s enemy.  I dare not dream of such a move.  The Gods forefend!”

“The Gods?” repeated Pratinas, with a cynical intonation.  “Do you believe there are any?”

“Do you?” retorted Lucius, feeling all the time that a deadly temptation had hold of him, which he could by no means resist.

“Why?” said the Greek.  “Your Latin Ennius states my view, in some of your rather rough and blundering native tetrameters.  He says:—­

  “’There’s a race of gods in heaven; so I’ve said and still will say. 
  But I deem that we poor mortals do not come beneath their sway. 
  Otherwise the good would triumph, whereas evil reigns to-day.’”

“And you advise?” said Ahenobarbus, leaning forward with pent-up excitement.

“I advise?” replied Pratinas; “I am only a poor ignorant Hellene, and who am I, to give advice to Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, a most noble member of the most noble of nations!”

If Pratinas had said:  “My dear Lucius, you are a thick-headed, old-fashioned, superstitious Roman, whom I, in my superior wisdom, utterly despise,” he would have produced about the same effect upon young Ahenobarbus.

But Lucius still fluttered vainly,—­a very weak conscience whispering that Drusus had never done him any harm; that murder was a dangerous game, and that although his past life had been bad enough, he had never made any one—­unless it were a luckless slave or two—­the victim of bloodthirsty passion or rascality.