ris came in. The governor's careful wife had not quitted her
husband's couch--even Rustem's storming had not induced her to leave her
post; but when she was informed by the slaves what had been going on,
and that Paula was still up-stairs with the leech, she had come to the
strangers' rooms as soon as her husband could spare her to speak to
Philippus, to represent to Paula what the proprieties required, and to
find out what the strange noises could be which still seemed to fill the
house--at this hour usually as silent as the grave. They proceeded from
the sick-rooms, but also from Orion, who had just come in, and from
Nilus the treasurer, who had been called by the former into his room,
though the night was fast drawing on to morning. To the governor's wife
everything seemed ominous at the close of this terrible day, marked in
the calendar as unlucky; so she made her way up-stairs, escorted by her
husband's night watcher, and holding in her hand a small reliquary to
which she ascribed the power of banning vile spirits.

She came into the sick-room swiftly and noiselessly, put the nun through
a strict cross-examination with the fretful sharpness of a person
disturbed in her night's rest. Then she went into the sitting-room where
Philippus was on the point of pledging Paula in his second cup of wine,
while she stood before him with dishevelled hair and robe ungirt. All
this was an offence against good manners such as she would not suffer
in her house, and she stoutly ordered her husband's niece to go to
bed. After all the offences that had been pardoned her this day--no,
yesterday--she exclaimed, it would have been more becoming in the girl
to examine herself in silence, in her own room, to exorcise the lying
spirits which had her in their power, and implore her Saviour for
forgiveness, than to pretend to be nursing the sick while she was
carrying on, with a young man, an orgy which, as the Sister had just
told her, had lasted since mid-day.

Paula spoke not a word, though the color changed in her face more than
once as she listened to this speech. But when Neforis finally pointed to
the door, she said, with all the cold pride she had at her command when
she was the object of unworthy suspicions:

"Your aim is easily seen through. I should scorn to reply, but that you
are the wife of the man who, till you set him against me, was glad to
call himself my friend and protector, and who is also related to me. As
usual, you