n what you had hoped. Make it your duty, pious soul, to render
him worthy of grace--but do not be in a hurry to speak the final yes--do
not say it yet."

Paula yielded, though unwillingly, to this last word of counsel; but, in
fact, Orion's fault had filled the abbess with deep distrust. So great
a sinner, under the blight, too, of a father's curse, ought, in her
opinion, to have retired from the world and besieged Heaven for grace
and a new birth, instead of seeking joys, such as she thought none but
the most blameless--and, those of her own confession--could deserve,
in union with so exceptional a creature as her beloved Paula. Indeed,
having herself found peace for her soul only in the cloister, after
a stormy and worldly youth, she would gladly have received the noble
daughter of her old friend as the Bride of Christ within those walls,
to be, perhaps, her successor as Mother Superior. She longed that
her darling should be spared the sufferings she had known through the
ruthlessness of faithless men; so she would not abate a jot of the tenor
of her advice, or cease to impress on Paula, firmly though lovingly, the
necessity of following it. At last Paula took leave of her, bound by a
promise not to pledge herself irrevocably to Orion till his return from
Doomiat, and till the abbess had informed her by letter what opinion she
had formed of him in the course of their flight.

The high-spirited girl had not shed so many tears, as in the course of
this interview, since the fatal affair at Abyla where she had lost her
father and brother; it was with a tear-stained face and aching head that
she had made her way back, under the scorching mid-day sun, to Rufinus'
house, where she sought her old nurse. Betta had earnestly entreated her
to lie down, and when Paula refused to hear of it she persuaded her at
any rate to bathe her head with water as cold as was procurable in this
terrific heat, and to have her hair carefully rearranged by her skilful
hand; for this had been her mother's favorite remedy against headache.
When, at length, Paula and her lover stood face to face, in a shady spot
in the garden, they both looked embarrassed and estranged. He was pale,
and gazed at her with some annoyance; and her red eyes and knit brows,
for her brain was throbbing with piercing pain, did not tend to improve
his mood. It was her part to explain and excuse herself; and as he did
not at once address her after they had exchanged greeting