Cornelia read and studied, now Greek, now Latin; and sometimes caught herself half wishing to be a man and able to expound a cosmogony, or to decide the fate of empires by words flung down from the rostrum.

Then finally Agias came bringing Artemisia, who, as has been related, was introduced--by means of some little contriving--into the familia as a new serving-maid.

Such Artemisia was in name; but Cornelia, whose gratitude to Agias had known no bounds, took the little thing into her heart, and determined to devote herself to instructing an innocence that must not continue too long, despite its charming naivete.
Thus the days had passed for Cornelia.

But only a little while after Agias left for Rome,--with a very large packet of letters for Drusus,--the pleasant, self-created world of fantasy, that had given Cornelia some portion of happiness, vanished.

Like a clap of thunder from a cloudless sky Lucius Ahenobarbus suddenly arrived in Baiae.