custody, which was sufficiently galling, in addition to the ever present sense of personal danger.  The villa at Praeneste was guarded quietly by several armed slaves and peasants; not a morsel or drop passed Drusus’s lips that had not been tested and tasted by a trusty dependent.  The young man was not to go to Rome, despite his infinite yearning to see Cornelia, for every opportunity would be given in the dark city streets for an assassin.  In fact, Drusus was virtually a prisoner in his own estates, for only there could he feel reasonably safe from attack.

All these precautions Cornelia knew, for Agias was a master at smuggling letters in and out.  She had told Drusus frankly all that had passed, and how that she was acting as she did only for his sake.  She asked him to trust her, and he wrote back that no doubt of her fidelity to him had crossed his mind; he was not worthy of such love as she had for him; it did not matter very much if Ahenobarbus did kill him, except that it would give her new grief and pain, and the thought of that he could not bear.  Cornelia had replied that if Drusus was murdered, she was woman enough and Roman enough to stab Lucius Ahenobarbus on their marriage night, and then plunge the dagger into her own breast.  And there the fearful matter had rested; Cornelia smiled by day, and dazzled all she met by her vivacity, and her aggressive queenliness; and by night cried with tearless sobs, which came out of the depths of her heart.  And all the time she waited for Agias to foil the plot, and assure Drusus of his life.  Let Quintus once be safe, and then—­how could she resist the irresistible pressure that would be brought to bear to force her into a hated marriage, which Ahenobarbus—­balked though he might be of a fortune—­would no longer care to defer?  And when Cornelia thought of this, and when she was alone, she would open a little casket, of which no other had the key, and touch the ivory-carved hilt of a small damascened knife.  The blade was very sharp; and there was a sticky gum all along the edge,—­deadly poison; only a very slight scratch put one beyond aid of physician.

The bitterest cup of all was the attitude she felt forced to assume toward Lucius Ahenobarbus.  There were limits of familiarity and simulated affection beyond which she could not drive herself to go.  Lucius was with her at all hours and in all places.  The more she saw of him the more she abhorred his effeminate sensuality and lack of almost every quality that made life worth the living.  But she must—­she must learn the plot against Drusus, and precisely how and when the trap was to be sprung.  And in a measure, at least so far as Lucius was concerned, she succeeded.  By continually and openly reviling Quintus, by professing to doubt the legality of a marriage contracted against the terms of her father’s will, by all but expressing the wish that her late lover were out of harm’s way, she won her point.  In a fit of half-drunken confidence Ahenobarbus assured