“Depart?” burst from Drusus.

“Depart!” replied Cornelia, desperately; “if you stay I shall go mad.  I shall beg you to yield,—­which would be base of me; and if you heard my prayers, it would be more base in you.”

“Fool,” shouted Lentulus, “don’t you know you will be the first I’ll mark for slaughter in the next proscription?  You, mistress, go to your room, if you cannot keep a civil tongue!  And you, sir, get you gone, unless you wish the slaves to cast you out.”

“Farewell, Cornelia!” gasped the young man; and he turned his back, and started out into the colonnade.

“Oh, Quintus, return!” shrieked Claudia, wringing her hands.  “All the gods blast you!” muttered Lentulus, quivering with fury; then he shouted at the top of his shrill, harsh voice:  “My enemies are my enemies.  You are warned.  Take care!”

“And do you take warning!  A Livian never forgets! Mars regat! Let War rule!” cried Drusus, turning at the vestibule, and brandishing a knotted fist.  Lentulus stared after him, half furious, half intimidated.  But Claudia glanced back into the room from the just emptied doorway, and gave a scream.

“The servants!  Help!  Water!  Cornelia has fainted!”

III

Drusus strode down the long avenue of shade trees.  The gardener stared after him, as the young man went by, his face knitted with a scowl of combined pain and fury, with never a word in reply to the rustic’s kindly salutation.

“Papae!"[83] muttered the man, “what has befallen Master Quintus?  Has he fallen out with her ladyship?”

  [83] “Strange!  Marvellous!”

Drusus kept on, looking neither to the right hand nor to the left, until he found himself past the boundary stone between his own estate and that of the Lentuli.  Then he stopped and passed his hand over his forehead.  It was damp with an unhealthy sweat.  His hands and frame were quivering as if in an ague.  He seated himself on a stone bench by the roadway, and tried to collect his faculties.

“Bear up, Drusus; be a Livian, as you boast yourself,” he declaimed frantically to himself.  “Cornelia shall still be yours!  All things are possible to one who is young and strong, with a clear conscience!”

If this self-debate did not actually stimulate cheerfulness, it at least revived the embers of hope; and Drusus found himself trying to look the situation fairly in the face.

“You have thrown away your right to marry the dearest, loveliest, and noblest girl in the world,” he reflected bitterly.  “You have made an implacable enemy of one of the most powerful men of the state.  In short, your happiness is gone, and perhaps your life is in danger—­and for what?  A dream of reform which can never be realized?  A mad conspiracy to overthrow the commonwealth?  Is Caesar to be saviour or despot?  For what have you sacrificed yourself?”