“Surprised?” reëchoed Cornelia.  “What have I done or said that makes Lucius Ahenobarbus anything more than a very distant, a very distant acquaintance?”

“My dear girl,” exclaimed Herennia, throwing up her hands, “either you are the best actress, or the most innocent little wight, in Rome!  Don’t you know all that they say about you?”

“Who—­say—­what—­about—­me?” stammered Cornelia, rising in her chair so suddenly, as to disarrange all the work Cassandra had been doing on her hair.

“Why, everybody,” said Herennia, smiling with an exasperating deliberation.  “And then it has all come out in the daily gazette."[88]

  [88] Acta Diurna, prepared officially.

“Where is it?  Read!  Let me see,” pleaded Cornelia, agitated and trembling.

“Why, how troubled you are,” giggled Herennia.  “Yes, I have my freedman copy down the whole bulletin every day, as soon as it is posted by the censor’s officers; now let me see,” and she produced from under her robe a number of wooden, wax-covered tablets, strung together:  “the last praetor’s edict; the will of old Publius Blaesus;” and she ran over the headings with maddening slowness:  “the speech in the Senate of Curio—­what an impudent rascal; the money paid yesterday into the treasury,—­how dull to copy all that down!—­the meteor which fell over in Tibur, and was such a prodigy; oh, yes, here it is at last; you may as well hear what all Rome knows now, it’s at the end, among the private affairs.  ’Lucius Ahenobarbus, son of Lucius Domitius, the Consular, and Cornelia, daughter of the late tribune, Caius Lentulus, are in love.  They will be married soon.’”

These two brief sentences, which the mechanical difficulties under which journalistic enterprise laboured at that day made it impossible to expand into a modern “article,” were quite sufficient to tell a whole story to Rome.  Cornelia realized instantly that she had been made the victim of some vile trick, which she doubted not her would-be lover and her uncle had executed in collusion.  She took the tablets from Herennia’s hand, without a word, read the falsehoods once, twice, thrice.  The meaning of the day attached to the terms used intimated the existence of a low intrigue, quite as much as any honourable “engagement.”  If Cornelia did not soon become the lawful wife of Lucius Ahenobarbus, the world would feel justified in piling scandal upon her name.  The blow was numbing in its brutality.  Instead of crying and execrating the liars, as Herennia fully expected her to do, Cornelia merely handed back the tablets, and said with cold dignity, “I think some very unfortunate mistake has been made.  Lucius Ahenobarbus is no friend of mine.  Will you be so kind as to leave me with my maids?”