overnor's house, to her daughter seemed perverse and in bad taste;
and the bitterly vindictive attacks on her old friends, which were
constantly on Susannah's lips, aggrieved the girl, and finally set her
in opposition to her mother, whose judgment had hitherto seemed to her
infallible. Thus, when the governor's house was closed against her,
there was no one in whom she cared to confide, for a barrier stood
between her and Paula, and she was painfully conscious of its height
each time the wish to pass it recurred to her mind. Paula was certainly
"that other" of whom Orion had spoken; when she had stolen away to see
her in the evening after the funeral, she had been prompted less by a
burning wish to pour out her heart to a sympathizing hearer, than by
torturing curiosity mingled with jealousy. She had crept through the
hedge with a strangely-mixed feeling of tender longing and sullen
hatred; when they had met in the garden she had at first given herself
up to the full delight of being free to speak, and of finding a listener
in a woman so much her superior; but Paula's reserved replies to her
bold questioning had revived her feelings of envy and grudge. Any one
who did not hate Orion must, she was convinced, love him.

Were they not perhaps already pledged to each other! Very likely Paula
had thought of her as merely a credulous child, and so had concealed the
fact!

This "very likely" was torture to her, and she was determined to try, at
any rate, to settle the doubt. She had an ally at her command; this
was her foster-brother, the son of her deaf old nurse; she knew that
he would blindly obey all her wishes--nay, to please her, would throw
himself to the crocodiles in the Nile. Anubis had been her comrade in
all her childish sports, till at the age of fourteen, after learning to
read and write, her mother had obtained an appointment for him in the
governor's household, as an assistant to be further trained by the
treasurer Nilus. Dame Susannah intended to find him employment at
a future date on her estates, or at Memphis, the centre of their
administration, as he might prove himself capable. The lad was still
living with his mother under the rich widow's roof, and only spent his
working days at the governor's house, he was industrious and clever
during office hours, though between whiles he busied himself with things
altogether foreign to his future calling. At Katharina's request he
had opened a communication betwee