Otho was sincerely attached to her. He was proud of possessing as his bride the haughtiest, the most sumptuous, and the most entrancingly fair of all the ladies in Rome. Before the death of Rufius Crispinus he had estranged her affections from her husband; and it was more than suspected that her object in accepting Otho had not only been her admiration for his luxurious prodigality, but also an ulterior design of casting her sorcery over the youthful Nero. Otho had often praised her beauty to the Emperor, for it was a boastfulness from which he could not refrain. But he did not wish that Nero should see her. He knew too well the inflammable disposition of the youthful Cæsar, and the soaring ambition of his own unscrupulous consort. In this purpose he had been abetted secretly by Agrippina, who felt an instinctive dread of Poppæa, and who, if the day of her lawless exercise of power had not been ended within two months of her son’s accession, would have made Poppæa undergo the fate which she had already inflicted on Lollia Paulina. By careful contrivance Otho had managed to keep Poppæa at a distance from Nero. The task was easier, because Nero was short-sighted, and Poppæa, either in affectation of modesty, or from thinking that it became her, adopted the fashion of Eastern women, in covering the lower part of her face with a veil when she went forth in public. But that evening Nero, for the first time, saw her near at hand and face to face, and she had taken care that he should see her in the full lustre of her charms. Beyond all doubt she was not only dazzlingly beautiful, but also possessed that spell of brilliant and mobile expression, and the consummate skill in swaying the minds of men, which in earlier days had enabled Cleopatra to kindle the love of Julius Cæsar, and to hold empery over the heart of Marcus Antonius. Her features were almost infantile in their winning piquancy, and wore an expression of the most engaging innocence. Her long and gleaming tresses, which almost the first among the ladies of Rome she sprinkled with gold, were not tortured and twisted into strange shapes, but parted in soft, natural waves over her forehead, and flowed with perfect grace over her white neck, setting off the exquisite shape of her head. She was dressed that evening in robes which made up for their apparent simplicity by their priceless value. They were of the most delicate colours and the most exquisite textures. The tunic was of that pale shining gold which the ancients described by the word ‘hyaline’; the stola was of saffron colour. Her dress might have been described in terms like those which the poet applies to his sea-nymph-- ‘Her vesture showed the yellow samphire-pod, Her girdle the dove-coloured wave serene;’ and, indeed, the sea-nymph’s robe had already been described by Ovid, speaking of the dress known as _undulata_-- ‘Hic, undas imitatus, habet quoque nomen ab undis, Crediderim nymphas hac ego veste tegi.’