not get off without a lecture, unless she has already found an
opportunity elsewhere of expressing her indignation."

A few minutes later she had sprung to the top of a mound of earth covered
with turf, which she had some time since ordered to be thrown up close
behind the hedge through which she had yesterday made her way. Her little
feet were shod with handsome gold sandals set with sapphires, and she
seated herself on a low bench with a satisfied smile, as though to assist
at a theatrical performance. Some broad-leaved shrubs, placed behind this
place of ambush, screened her to some extent from the heat of the sun,
and as she sat watching and listening in this lurking place, which she
was not using for the first time, her heart began to beat more quickly;
indeed, in her excitement she quite forgot some sweetmeats which she had
brought to wile away the time and had poured into a large leaf in her
lap.

Happily she had not long to wait; Orion arrived in his mother's
four-wheeled covered chariot. By the side of the driver sat a servant,
and a slave was perched on the step to the door on each side of the
vehicle. It was followed by a few idlers, men and women, and a crowd of
half-naked children. But they got nothing by their curiosity, for the
carruca did not draw up in the road, but was driven into Rufinus' garden,
and the trees and shrubs hid it from the gaze of the expectant mob, which
presently dispersed.

Orion got out at the principal door of the house, followed by the
treasurer; and while the old man welcomed the son of the Mukaukas, Nilus
superintended the transfer of a considerable number of heavy sacks to
their host's private room.

Nothing of all this had seemed noteworthy to Katharina but the quantity
and size of the bags--full, no doubt, of gold--and the man, whom alone
she cared to see. Never had she thought Orion so handsome; the long,
flowing mourning robe, which he had flung over his shoulder in rich
folds, added to the height of his stately form; his abundant hair, not
curled but waving naturally, set off his face which, pale and grave as it
was, both touched and attracted her ir resistibly. The thought that this
splendid creature had once courted her, loved her, kissed her--that he
had once been hers, and that she had lost him to another, was a pang like
physical agony, mounting from her heart to her brain.

After Orion had vanished indoors, she still seemed to see him; and when
she thrust his i