her that she would not be troubled by Drusus for long; that he would soon be unable to annoy her.  And then came a great disappointment.  When Cornelia asked—­and how much the request cost her, only she herself knew—­to be let into the plot, Lucius owned that he had left the details in the hands of Pratinas, and did not himself know just how or when the blow was to fall.  In Pratinas—­whom Cornelia met very seldom—­she met with a sphinx, ever smiling, ever gracious, but who, as if regretting the burst of confidence he had allowed Valeria, kept himself closed to the insinuations and half-questions of every one else.  The truth was, the lanista Dumnorix was unwilling to do his part of the business until the festival at Anagnia brought him and his band through Praeneste, and this festival had been postponed.  Consequently, the projected murder had been postponed a few days also.  Agias had tried to penetrate into the secrets of Pratinas, but found that judicious intriguer had, as a rule, carefully covered his tracks.  He spent a good deal of time and money, which Cornelia gave him, trying to corrupt some of the gladiators of Dumnorix’s band and get at the intentions of their master; but he was not able to find that any of these wretches, who took his gold greedily enough, really knew in the least what were the appointments and engagements of the Gallic giant.  As a matter of fact, the boy began to feel decidedly discouraged.  Pisander had nothing more to tell; and, moreover, the worthy philosopher often gave such contradictory accounts of what he had overheard in Valeria’s boudoir, that Agias was at his wit’s end when and where to begin.

So passed the rest of the month since Cornelia had been brought from Praeneste to Rome.

III

Cornelia began to grow sick at heart.  The conviction was stealing over her that she was the victim of a cruel destiny, and it was useless to fight against fate.  She had made sacrifices for Drusus’s sake that had cost her infinitely.  All Rome said that Cornelia returned the love of Lucius Ahenobarbus.  And with it all, she knew that she had not succeeded in discovering the real plot of Pratinas, and could not thwart it.  She knew that nearly every one placed her, if actually not as vicious as the rest, at least in the same coterie with Clodia, and the wife of Lentulus Spinther the younger Metella, and only a grade better than such a woman as Arbuscula, the reigning actress of the day.  There was no defence to offer to the world.  Did she not go with her mother to the gay gathering, in the gardens by the Tiber?  Was she not waited on by half the fashionable young aristocrats of Rome?  Was she not affianced to a man who was notoriously a leader of what might to-day be called the “fast set” of the capital?  And from Drusus, poor fellow, she gained not the least consolation.  That he loved her as she loved him, she had never cause to doubt.  But in his self-renunciation he gave her