"Be silent!" he gasped, his face black with fury. "If every word you say were true, yet with all the more reason would I drag you in my marriage procession, and force you to avow yourself my wife. Never have I been balked of woman; and you, too, with all your tragic bathos, shall learn that, if you won't have me for a slave, I'll bow your neck to my yoke." "I think the very noble Lucius Ahenobarbus," replied Cornelia, in that high pitch of excitement which produces a calm more terrible than any open fury, "will in person be the protagonist in a tragedy very sorry for himself. For I can assure him that if he tries to make good his threat, I shall show myself one of the Danaides, and he will need his funeral feast full soon after the wedding banquet." "Woman!" and Lentulus, thoroughly exasperated, broke in furiously. "Say another word, and I with my own hands will flog you like a common slave." Cornelia laughed hysterically. "Touch me!" she shouted; and in her grasp shone a small bright dagger. Lentulus fell back. There was something about his niece that warned him to be careful. "Wretched girl!" he commanded, "put down that dagger." "I will not," and Cornelia stood resolutely, confronting her two persecutors; her head thrown back, and the light making her throat and face shine white as driven snow. There was very little chivalry among the ancients. Lentulus deliberately clapped his hands, and two serving-men appeared. "Take that dagger from the Lady Cornelia!" commanded the master. The men exchanged sly glances, and advanced to accomplish the disarming. But before they could catch Cornelia's slender wrists in their coarse, rough hands, and tear the little weapon from her, there were cuts and gashes on their own arms; for the struggle if brief was vicious. Cornelia stood disarmed. "You see what these mock heroics will lead to," commented Lentulus, with sarcastic smile, as he observed his order had been obeyed. "_You_ will see!" was her quick retort. "_Hei! hei!_" screamed one of the slaves an instant later, sinking to the floor. "Poison! It's running through my veins! I shall die!" "You will die," repeated Cornelia, in ineffable scorn, spurning the wretch with her foot. "Lie there and die! Cease breathing; sleep! And that creature, Ahenobarbus, yonder, shall sleep his sleep too, ere he work his will on me! Ha! ha! Look at my handiwork; the other slave is down!" "Girl! Murderess!" raged Lentulus. "What is this? You have slain these men." "I have slain your slaves," said Cornelia, resolutely folding her arms; "the poison on the dagger was very swift. You did excellently well, Lucius, not to come near me." And she picked up the dagger, which the slave, writhing in agony, had dropped.