t; Orion arrived in his mother's
four-wheeled covered chariot. By the side of the driver sat a servant,
and a slave was perched on the step to the door on each side of the
vehicle. It was followed by a few idlers, men and women, and a crowd of
half-naked children. But they got nothing by their curiosity, for
the carruca did not draw up in the road, but was driven into Rufinus'
garden, and the trees and shrubs hid it from the gaze of the expectant
mob, which presently dispersed.

Orion got out at the principal door of the house, followed by the
treasurer; and while the old man welcomed the son of the Mukaukas, Nilus
superintended the transfer of a considerable number of heavy sacks to
their host's private room.

Nothing of all this had seemed noteworthy to Katharina but the quantity
and size of the bags--full, no doubt, of gold--and the man, whom alone
she cared to see. Never had she thought Orion so handsome; the long,
flowing mourning robe, which he had flung over his shoulder in rich
folds, added to the height of his stately form; his abundant hair, not
curled but waving naturally, set off his face which, pale and grave as
it was, both touched and attracted her ir resistibly. The thought that
this splendid creature had once courted her, loved her, kissed her--that
he had once been hers, and that she had lost him to another, was a pang
like physical agony, mounting from her heart to her brain.

After Orion had vanished indoors, she still seemed to see him; and when
she thrust his image from her fancy, forced to remind herself that he
was now standing face to face with that other, and was looking at Paula
as, a few days since, he had looked at her, the anguish of her soul was
doubled. And was Paula only half as happy as she had been in that hour
of supreme bliss? Ah! how her heart ached! She longed to leap over the
hedge--she could have rushed into the house and flung herself between
Paula and Orion.

Still, there she sat; restless but without moving; wholly under the
dominion of evil thoughts, among which a good one rarely and timidly
intruded, with her eyes fixed on Rufinus' dwelling. It stood in the
broad sunshine as silent as death, as if all were sleeping. In the
garden, too, all was motionless but the thin jet of water, which danced
up from the marble tank with a soft and fitful, but monotonous tinkle,
while butterflies, dragonflies, bees, and beetles, whose hum she could
not hear, seemed to circle round the f