ave done that which my own
heart tells me was right; and more than that or less than that, can no
true woman do!"

Ahenobarbus felt the room spinning round him. He saw himself ruined in
everything that he had held dear. He would be the laughing-stock of
Rome; he, the hero of a score of amorous escapades, the darling of as
many patrician maidens, jilted by the one woman to whom he had become
the abject slave. Courage came from despair.

"Be silent!" he gasped, his face black with fury. "If every word you
say were true, yet with all the more reason would I drag you in my
marriage procession, and force you to avow yourself my wife. Never
have I been balked of woman; and you, too, with all your tragic
bathos, shall learn that, if you won't have me for a slave, I'll bow
your neck to my yoke."

"I think the very noble Lucius Ahenobarbus," replied Cornelia, in that
high pitch of excitement which produces a calm more terrible than any
open fury, "will in person be the protagonist in a tragedy very sorry
for himself. For I can assure him that if he tries to make good his
threat, I shall show myself one of the Danaides, and he will need his
funeral feast full soon after the wedding banquet."

"Woman!" and Lentulus, thoroughly exasperated, broke in furiously.
"Say another word, and I with my own hands will flog you like a common
slave."

Cornelia laughed hysterically.

"Touch me!" she shouted; and in her grasp shone a small bright dagger.

Lentulus fell back. There was something about his niece that warned
him to be careful.

"Wretched girl!" he commanded, "put down that dagger."

"I will not," and Cornelia stood resolutely, confronting her two
persecutors; her head thrown back, and the light making her throat and
face shine white as driven snow.

There was very little chivalry among the ancients. Lentulus
deliberately clapped his hands, and two serving-men appeared.

"Take that dagger from the Lady Cornelia!" commanded the master. The
men exchanged sly glances, and advanced to accomplish the disarming.

But before they could catch Cornelia's slender wrists in their coarse,
rough hands, and tear the little weapon from her, there were cuts and
gashes on their own arms; for the struggle if brief was vicious.
Cornelia stood disarmed.

"You see what these mock heroics will lead to," commented Lentulus,
with sarcastic smile, as he observed his order had been obeyed.

"_You_ will see!" was her quick retort.

"_Hei! h