Claudia was a woman of the same fashionable type as Valeria, good-looking, ostentatious, proud, selfish, devoid of any aim in life save the securing of the most vapid pleasure.

At the moment, she was stretched out on a thickly cushioned couch.

She had thrown on a loose dress of silken texture.

A negress was waving over her head a huge fan of long white feathers.

A second negress was busy mixing in an _Authepsa_,--a sort of silver urn, heated by charcoal,--a quantity of spices, herbs, and water, which the lady was to take as soon as it was sufficiently steeped.
Claudia had been enjoying an unusually gay round of excitement while at Baiae, and she had but just come up to Praeneste, to recover herself after the exertions of a score of fashionable suppers, excursions on the Lucrine Lake, and the attendant exhausting amusements.