ite sport; still,
in one respect it did not fulfil her intentions, for Paula gave no sign
of suffering the agonies of jealousy which Katharina had hoped to excite
in her. Heliodora, on the other hand, came home depressed and uneasy;
Paula had received her coldly and with polite formality, and the young
widow had remained fully aware that so remarkable a woman might well cast
her own image in Orion's heart into the shade, or supplant it altogether.

Like a wounded man who, in spite of the anguish, cannot resist touching
the wound to assure himself of its state, Heliodora went constantly to
see Katharina in order to watch her rival from the garden or to be taken
to call on her, though she was always very coldly received.

At first Katharina had pitied the young woman whose superior in
intelligence she knew herself to be; but a certain incident had
extinguished this feeling; she now simply hated her, and pricked her with
needle-thrusts whenever she had a chance. Paula seemed invulnerable; but
there was not a pang which Katharina would not gladly have given her to
whom she owed the deepest humiliation her young life had ever known. How
was it that Paula failed to regard Heliodora as a rival? She had
reflected that, if Orion had really returned the widow's passion, he
could not have borne so long a separation. It was on purpose to avoid
Heliodora, and to remain faithful to what he was and must always be to
Paula, that he had gone with the senator, far from Memphis.
Heliodora--her instinct assured her--was the poor, forsaken woman with
whom he had trifled at Byzantium, and for whom he had committed that
fatal theft of the emerald. If Fate would but bring him home to her, and
if she then yielded all he asked--all her own soul urged her to grant,
then she would be the sole mistress and queen of his heart--she must be,
she was sure of it! And though, even as she thought of it, she bowed her
head in care, it was not from fear of losing him; it was only her anxiety
about her father, her good old friend, Rufinus, and his family, whom she
had made so entirely her own.

This was the state of affairs this morning, when to his old friend's
vexation, Philippus had so hastily and silently drunk off his
after-breakfast draught; just as he set down the cup, the black
door-keeper announced that a hump-backed man wished to see his master at
once on important business.

"Important business!" repeated the leech. "Give me four more legs in