The whirl of thoughts which rushed to her brain now made her giddy. Instinctively now, as she had done then, she looked down on her hands—those hands which were to guide the destinies of Rome—and her heart had a curious twinge of pain, almost of fear, for she realised more fully than before how small and delicate they were.
"Time walks closely on the heels of destiny, O Augusta!" urged Marcus Ancyrus, the elder, in his gently insinuating voice; "for the nonce Jove has damped the wrath of the people of Rome, but that wrath is only dormant, it will break out afresh. The storm in the heavens will pass by, but the tempest caused by a raging mob will reawaken with double fury. In thy hands, Augusta, in thy hands!..."
She knew that all these men wanted was to use her as a tool—a puppet to dance to their piping. She knew that anon they would be as ready to betray her as they were betraying their Cæsar now. Yesternight had they come to her with their proposals she would have rejected them with unqualified scorn; but since yesternight she had seen the Cæsar abject, cowardly, degraded, dragging his bespattered majesty across the floor of this house; she had measured him—not by what he represented, but by what he was, and she had taken his measure ... and that of another ... and the Cæsar was lower than the brutes—and that other was greater than men.
A silent voice, a whisper which mayhap was an inspiration, caused her to look toward the studio.
"In there, my lords," she said, pointing to the door, "we shall be safe from watchful eyes and ears, and I will listen to what you have to say."
She chose not to see the look of triumph which flashed from six pairs of eyes, but calmly led the way toward the studio.
Caius Nepos and the others followed her without a word. Dion and Nolus rose as she entered, and she dismissed them, whilst ordering them to wait her pleasure outside the door. The two men—brought up in the school of slavery, were too well drilled to marvel at the gracious lady's many moods; they did not even cast one look in the direction of the inner room where they knew that the praefect of Rome still lay in a drugged sleep.
As soon as they were gone Dea Flavia turned again to Caius Nepos and to his friends.
"I pray you sit," she said simply.
She herself sat on a high chair with circular back carved of citrus wood, but Caius Nepos and the others preferred to stand.