Clearly the master of the house had returned, and all the familia and freedmen bustled about their various tasks with the unusual promptitude and diligence which is the outcome of a healthy fear of retribution for slackness. Lentulus went into the atrium, and there had an angry conference with the local land-steward, over some accounts which the latter presented. In fact, so ill was the humour of the noble lord, that Cornelia avoided going out from her room to meet him, and pretended to be so engrossed in her Ennius that she did not hear he had come. This pretence, however, could not last long. Lentulus called out in a surly tone to know where his niece was, and the latter was fain to present herself. It could not be said that the meeting between Cornelia and her uncle was extremely affectionate. The interchange of kisses was painfully formal, and then Lentulus demanded somewhat abruptly:-- "How have you been spending your time? With that young ne'er-do-weel son of Sextus Drusus?" "Quintus was here this morning," said Cornelia, feeling a little reproachful at the manner in which her uncle had spoken of her lover. "Just back from Rome, I presume?" said Lentulus, icily, "and he must fly over to the cote of his little dove and see that she hasn't flitted away? He'd better have a care in his doings. He'll have something more serious on hand than lovemaking before long." "I don't understand you, uncle," said Cornelia, turning rather red; "Quintus has never done anything for which he has cause to fear." "Oh, he hasn't, eh?" retorted Lentulus. "_Mehercle!_ what donkeys you women are! You may go, I want to see your mother." "She is in her own room," said Cornelia, turning her back; "I wish you would not speak to me in that way again." Lentulus wandered through the mazes of courts, colonnades, and the magnificently decorated and finished rooms of the villa, until he came to the chamber of Claudia, his sister-in-law. 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. When her brother-in-law entered the room, she raised her carefully tinted eyebrows, and observed with great languor:-- "So you have gotten away from Rome, at last, my Lucius?"