All Rome said that Cornelia returned the love of Lucius Ahenobarbus.

And with it all, she knew that she had not succeeded in discovering the real plot of Pratinas, and could not thwart it.

She knew that nearly every one placed her, if actually not as vicious as the rest, at least in the same coterie with Clodia, and the wife of Lentulus Spinther the younger Metella, and only a grade better than such a woman as Arbuscula, the reigning actress of the day.

There was no defence to offer to the world.

Did she not go with her mother to the gay gathering, in the gardens by the Tiber?
Was she not waited on by half the fashionable young aristocrats of Rome?
Was she not affianced to a man who was notoriously a leader of what might to-day be called the "fast set" of the capital?
And from Drusus, poor fellow, she gained not the least consolation.