bout two hours after noon Paula's restlessness had increased so much
that now and then she wandered out of the sick-room, which looked over
the garden, to watch the Nile-quay from the window of the anteroom; for
he might arrive by either way. She never thought of the security of her
property; but the question arose in her mind as to whether it were not
actually a breach of duty to avoid the agitation it would cost her to
meet her cousin face to face. On this point no one could advise her,
not even Perpetua; her own mother could hardly have understood all her
feelings on such an occasion. She scarcely knew herself indeed; for
hitherto she had never failed, even in the most difficult cases, to know
at once and without long reflection, what to do and to leave undone,
what under special circumstances was right or wrong. But now she felt
herself a yielding reed, a leaf tossed hither and thither; and every
time she set her teeth and clenched her hands, determined to think
calmly and to reason out the "for" and "against," her mind wandered
away again, while the memory of her dream, of Orion as he stood by his
father's grave--of Katharina's tale of "the other," and the fearful
punishment which he had to suffer, nay indeed, certainly had
suffered--came and went in her mind like the flocks of birds over the
Nile, whose dipping and soaring had often passed like a fluttering veil
between her eye and some object on the further shore.

It was three hours past noon, and she had returned to the sick-room,
when she thought that she heard hoofs in the garden and hurried to the
window once more. Her heart had not beat more wildly when the dog
had flown at her and Hiram that fateful night, than it did now as she
hearkened to the approach of a horseman, still hidden from her gaze by
the shrubs. It must be Orion--but why did he not dismount? No, it could
not be he; his tall figure would have overtopped the shrubbery which was
of low growth.

She did not know her host's friends; it was one of them very likely. Now
the horse had turned the corner; now it was coming up the path from the
front gate; now Rufinus had gone forth to meet the visitor--and it was
not Orion, but his secretary, a much smaller man, who slipped off a mule
that she at once recognized, threw the reins to a lad, handed something
to the old man, and then dropped on to a bench to yawn and stretch his
legs.

Then she saw Rufinus come towards the house. Had Orion charged this