ng about politics. You are
wiser than I, and I can trust you. But please don't quarrel with my
uncle Lentulus about your decision. He would be terribly angry."

Quintus smiled in turn, and kissing her, said: "Can you trust me? I
hope so. And be assured I will do all I may, not to quarrel with your
uncle. And now away with all this silly serious talk! What a pity for
Mamercus to have been so gloomy as to introduce it! What a pity I must
go to Rome to-morrow, and leave this dear old place! But then, I have
to see my aunt Fabia, and little Livia, the sister I haven't met since
she was a baby. And while I am in Rome I will do something else--can
you guess?" Cornelia shook her head. "Carpenters, painters, masons! I
will send them out to make this old villa fresh and pretty for some
one who, I hope, will come here to live in about a month. No, don't
run away," for Cornelia was trying to hide her flushed face by flight;
"I have something else to get--a present for your own dear self. What
shall it be? I am rich; cost does not matter."

Cornelia pursed her lips in thought.

"Well," she remarked, "if you could bring me out a pretty boy, not too
old or too young, one that was honest and quick-witted, he would be
very convenient to carry messages to you, and to do any little
business for me."

Cornelia asked for a slave-boy just as she might have asked for a new
pony, with that indifference to the question of humanity which
indicated that the demarcation between a slave and an animal was very
slight in her mind.

"Oh! that is nothing," said Drusus; "you shall have the handsomest and
cleverest in all Rome. And if Mamercus complains that I am extravagant
in remodelling the house, let him remember that his wonderful Caesar,
when a young man, head over ears in debt, built an expensive villa at
Aricia, and then pulled it down to the foundations and rebuilt on an
improved plan. Farewell, Sir Veteran, I will take Cornelia home, and
then come back for that dinner which I know the cook has made ready
with his best art."

Arm in arm the young people went away down the avenue of shade trees,
dim in the gathering twilight. Mamercus stood gazing after them.

"What a pity! What a pity!" he repeated to himself, "that Sextus and
Caius are not alive; how they would have rejoiced in their children!
Why do the fates order things as they do? Only let them be kind enough
to let me live until I hold another little Drusus on my knee, and tell
h