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"Why, how troubled you are," giggled Herennia. "Yes, I have my freedman copy down the whole bulletin every day, as soon as it is posted by the censor's officers; now let me see," and she produced from under her robe a number of wooden, wax-covered tablets, strung together: "the last prætor's edict; the will of old Publius Blæsus;" and she ran over the headings with maddening slowness: "the speech in the Senate of Curio what an impudent rascal; the money paid yesterday into the treasury, how dull to copy all that down! the meteor which fell over in Tibur, and was such a prodigy; oh, yes, here it is at last; you may as well hear what all Rome knows now, it's at the end, among the private affairs.
"Surprised?" reëchoed Cornelia. "What have I done or said that makes Lucius Ahenobarbus anything more than a very distant, a very distant acquaintance?" "My dear girl," exclaimed Herennia, throwing up her hands, "either you are the best actress, or the most innocent little wight, in Rome! Don't you know all that they say about you?"
So far from aiming, as do modern ladies, to reduce the waist to the slenderest possible proportions, Herennia, who was actually quite thin, had carefully padded out her form to proper dimensions, and showed this fact by her constrained motions. She was rouged and painted, and around her floated an incense of a thousand and one rare perfumes.
"Who say what about me?" stammered Cornelia, rising in her chair so suddenly, as to disarrange all the work Cassandra had been doing on her hair. "Why, everybody," said Herennia, smiling with an exasperating deliberation. "And then it has all come out in the daily gazette." Acta Diurna, prepared officially. "Where is it? Read! Let me see," pleaded Cornelia, agitated and trembling.
"The outrageous scapegrace!" cried Cornelia, while her maids hurried along a toilet which, if not as elaborate as Herennia's, took some little time. "I imagined he might do such things! I always detested him!" "Then you are not so very fond of Lucius Ahenobarbus," said Herennia, raising her carefully painted eyebrows, as if in astonishment. "I am really a little surprised."
That same day when Herennia called to see her, that excellent young lady for not the least reason in the world had been full of stories of poisoning and murders, how some years ago a certain Balbutius of Larinum was taken off, it was said, at a wedding feast of a friend for whom the poison had been intended; and then again she had to tell how, at another time, poison had been put in a bit of bread of which the victim partook.
And how had Cornelia borne it she at whom Herennia had stared in amazement, when that "dear friend" discovered the friendship the other was displaying to Lucius Ahenobarbus? Cornelia had received the announcement very quietly, one might almost say resignedly. She had one great hope and consolation to support her.
And indeed, when Agias reached Rome once more, all fears in that direction were completely set at rest. The fashionable circle in which Claudia and Herennia were enmeshed was in a flutter and a chatter over no ordinary scandal.
For all this display of extravagance, Herennia was of only very mediocre beauty; and it was on this account that she was always glad to make uncomfortable flings at her "dear friend" Cornelia, whenever possible. Herennia seated herself on a divan, and proceeded to plunge into all the flying gossip of the day.
Cornelia went into her own room, and was summoning her maids, when a young lady of about her own age, who affected to be on terms of considerable intimacy, was announced Herennia, a daughter of a certain rich old eques, Caius Pontius, who had kept out of politics and hoarded money, which his daughter was doing her best to spend. Herennia was already dressed for the party.
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