to have a bath made
ready for her as soon as they should reach home.

She felt utterly shattered; on the spot where the old man's
plague-stricken hand had rested she was conscious of a heavy, hateful
pressure, and when the chariot at length drove into their own garden
something warm and heavy-something she could not shake off, still seemed
to weigh on her brain.

The windows were all dark excepting one on the ground-floor, where a
light was still visible in the room inhabited by Heliodora. A diabolical
thought flashed through her over-excited and restless mind; without
looking to the right hand or the left she obeyed the impulse and went
forward, just as she was, into her friend's sitting-room and then,
lifting a curtain, on into the bedroom. Heliodora was lying on her couch,
still suffering from a headache which had prevented her going to visit
their neighbors; at first she did not notice the late visitor who stood
by her side and bid her good evening.

A single lamp shed a dim light in the spacious room, and the young girl
had never thought their guest so lovely as she looked in that twilight. A
night wrapper of the thinnest material only half hid her beautiful limbs.
Round her flowing, fair hair, floated the subtle, hardly perceptible
perfume which always pervaded this favorite of fortune. Two heavy plaits
lay like sheeny snakes over her bosom and the white sheet. Her face was
turned upwards and was exquisitely calm and sweet; and as she lay
motionless and smiled up at Katharina, she looked like an angel wearied
in well-doing.

No man could resist the charms of this woman, and Orion had succumbed. By
her side was a lute, from which she brought the softest and most soothing
tones, and thus added to the witchery of her appearance.

Katharina's whole being was in wild revolt; she did not know how she was
able to return Heliodora's greeting, and to ask her how she could
possibly play the lute with a headache.

"Just gliding my fingers over the strings calms and refreshes my blood,"
she replied pleasantly. "But you, child, look as if you were suffering
far worse than I.--Did you come home in the chariot that drove up just
now?"

"Yes," replied Katharina. "I have been to see our dear old bishop. He is
very ill, dying; he will soon be taken from us. Oh, what a fearful day!
First Orion's mother, then Paula, and now this to crown all! Oh,
Heliodora, Heliodora!"

She fell on her knees by the bed and pressed her face