“Oh, Quintus!  Quintus!” she cried, nearly sobbing, “I am so glad you have come!”

“And I am glad,” said the young man, perhaps with a tremor in his voice.

“I never knew how I wanted you, until you are here,” she continued; “I didn’t look for you to-day.  I supposed you would come from Puteoli to-morrow.  Oh!  Quintus, you must be very kind to me.  Perhaps I am very stupid.  But I am tired, tired.”

Drusus looked at her in a bit of astonishment.

“Tired!  I can’t see that you look fatigued.”

“Not in body,” went on Cornelia, still holding on to him.  “But here, sit down on the grass.  Let me hold your hands.  You do not mind.  I want to talk with you.  No, don’t interrupt.  I must tell you.  I have been here in Praeneste only a week.  I wanted to get away from Baiae.[17] I was afraid to stay there with my mother.”

  [17] The famous watering-place on the Bay of Naples.

“Afraid to stay at that lovely seashore house with your mother!” exclaimed Drusus, by no means unwilling to sit as entreated, but rather bewildered in mind.

“I was afraid of Lucius Ahenobarbus, the consular[18] Domitius’s second son. I don’t like him! there!” and Cornelia’s grey eyes lit up with menacing fire.

  [18] An ex-consul was known by this title.

“Afraid of Lucius Ahenobarbus!” laughed Drusus.  “Well, I don’t think I call him a very dear friend.  But why should he trouble you?”

“It was ever since last spring, when I was in the new theatre[19] seeing the play, that he came around, thrust himself upon me, and tried to pay attentions.  Then he has kept them up ever since; he followed us to Baiae; and the worst of it is, my mother and uncle rather favour him.  So I had Stephanus, my friend the physician, say that sea air was not good for me, and I was sent here.  My mother and uncle will come in a few days, but not that fellow Lucius, I hope.  I was so tired trying to keep him off.”

  [19] Built by Pompeius the Great, in 55-54 B.C.

“I will take care of the knave,” said Drusus, smiling.  “So this is the trouble?  I wonder that your mother should have anything to do with such a fellow.  I hear in letters that he goes with a disreputable gang.  He is a boon companion with Marcus Laeca, the old Catilinian,[20] who is a smooth-headed villain, and to use a phrase of my father’s good friend Cicero—­’has his head and eyebrows always shaved, that he may not be said to have one hair of an honest man about him.’  But he will have to reckon with me now.  Now it is my turn to talk.  Your long story has been very short.  Nor is mine long.  My old uncle Publius Vibulanus is dead.  I never knew him well enough to be able to mourn him bitterly.  Enough, he died at ninety; and just as I arrive at Puteoli comes a message that I am his sole heir.  His freedmen knew I was coming, embalmed the body, and wait for me to go to Rome to-morrow to give the funeral oration and light the pyre.  He has left a fortune fit to compare with that of Crassus[21]—­real estate, investments, a lovely villa at Tusculum.  And now I—­no, we—­are wealthy beyond avarice.  Shall we not thank the Gods?”