Cornelia presently found pretexts to get rid of all her women. Agias reconnoitred, made certain that there was no eavesdropper, and began afresh. "What I have to say is so different from that which we feared a few days since, that I scarce know how you will receive it. I have just learned that your uncle Lucius Lentulus and Lucius Ahenobarbus made a landing on the coast the day after Pompeius was murdered; they have been quietly arrested and the matter hushed up. I believe that Pothinus intends to execute them without your knowledge. Only by a friendship with some of the officers of the guard did I get at this." Cornelia's lips twitched; her hands pressed on her cheeks till the pale skin flushed red. In her heart a hundred conflicting emotions held sway. She said nothing for a long time, and then it was only to ask where the prisoners were confined. "They are in the dungeon of the fortress," said Agias. "That is all that I can discover." "I must see them at once," declared the lady. "I do not know how Pothinus will take this," replied the young freedman; "the discovery of his secret will be rightly attributed to me, and your ladyship would not care to imperil my life unless something very great is to be gained thereby." "I shall miss you very much," said Cornelia, soberly. "But though Lucius Lentulus has done me grievous ill, he is my uncle. You must leave Pelusium this very night, and keep out of danger until Pothinus's vexation can abate. In the morning I shall demand to see the prisoners and to learn the eunuch's intentions touching them." Agias accordingly fared away, much to Cornelia's regret; but not quite so much to his own, because his enforced journeying would take him to the Nile villa, where was the pretty Artemisia. Early on the following day Cornelia boldly went to Pothinus, and, without any explanations, demanded to see her uncle. The regent, who had tried to keep the matter profoundly secret, first was irate, then equivocated, and tried to deny that he had any Roman prisoners; then, driven to bay by Cornelia's persistency and quiet inflexibility before his denials and protests, gave her permission to be taken to the prison and see the captives.