Her face was the index of a soul which only used the meaner passions as aids to the gratification of the grander ambitions. No one who saw her, as she leant back in her easy half-recumbent attitude, could have doubted that he was in the presence of a lady born to rule, and in whose veins flowed the noblest blood of the most ancient families of Rome. She was thirty-seven years old, but was still in the zenith of her imperious charms, and her figure had lost none of the smooth and rounded contour of youth. Her features were small and delicate, the forehead well shaped, the eyes singularly bright, and of a light blue, under finely marked eyebrows. Her nose was slightly aquiline, the mouth small and red and beautiful, while the slight protrusion of the upper lip gave to it an expression of decided energy. Her hair was wavy, and fell in multitudes of small curls over her forehead and cheeks, but was confined at the back of the head in a golden net from which a lappet embroidered with pearls and sapphires fell upon her neck, half concealed by one soft and glowing tress. She sat there deep in thought, and her mind was not occupied with the exquisite image of herself reflected from the silver mirror which hung bright and large upon the wall before her. Her expression was that which she wears in her bust in the Capitol--the expression of one who is anxious, and waits. One sandalled foot rested on the ankle of the other, and her fair hands were lightly folded on her robe. That robe was the long _stola_ worn by noble matrons. It swept down to her feet and its sleeves reached to the elbows, where they were fastened by brooches of priceless onyx, leaving bare the rest of her shapely arms. Two large pearls were in her ears, but she had laid aside her other ornaments. On a little marble abacus beside her lay her many-jewelled rings, her superb armlets set with rubies, and the _murenula_--a necklace of linked and flexile gold glittering with gems--which had encircled her neck at the banquet from which she just had risen. Her attitude was one of rest; but there was no rest in the bosom which rose and fell unequally with her varying moods--no rest in the countenance with its look of proud and sleepless determination. She was alone, but a frequent and impatient glance showed that she expected some one to enter. She had dismissed her slaves, and was devoting her whole soul to the absorbing design for which at that moment she lived, and in the accomplishment of which she persuaded herself that she was ready to die. That design was the elevation of her Nero, at the first possible moment, to the throne whose dizzy steps were so slippery with blood.