ther the sisters were bound.

His mother and the nurse were dismissed from the room, and then the
water-wagtail in her gratitude had bent over him, had raised his pretty
face a little, and had given him two such sweet kisses that the poor boy
had been quite uneasy. But, when he was alone with his mother once more,
he had felt happier and happier, and the remembrance of the transient
rapture he had known had alleviated the pain he was suffering on
Katharina's account.

Katharina, meanwhile, did not go home at once to her mother; on the
contrary, she went straight off to the Bishop of Memphis, to whom
she divulged all she had learnt with regard to the inhabitants of the
convent and the intended rescue. The gentle Plotinus even had been
roused to great wrath, and no sooner had she left him than he set out
for Fostat to invoke the help of Amru, and--finding him absent--of his
Vekeel to enable him to pursue the fugitive Melchite sisters.

When the water-wagtail was at home again and alone in her room, she said
to herself, with calm satisfaction, that she had now contrived something
which would spoil several days for Orion and for Paula, and that might
prove even fatal, so far as she was concerned.

CHAPTER VIII.

Nilus had performed his errand well, and Rufinus was forced to admit
that Orion had done his part and had planned the enterprise with so much
care and unselfishness that his personal assistance could be dispensed
with. Under these circumstances he scarcely owed the young man a grudge
for placing himself at the service of his Byzantine friends; still,
his not coming to the house disturbed and vexed him, less on his own
account, or that of the good cause, than for Paula's sake, for her
feelings towards Orion had remained no secret to him or his wife.

Dame Joanna, indeed, felt the young man's conduct more keenly than
Rufinus; she would have been glad to withhold her husband from the
enterprise, whose dangers now appeared to her frightened soul tenfold
greater than they were. But she knew that the Nile would flow backwards
before she could dissuade him from keeping his promise to the abbess, so
she forced herself to preserve at any rate outward composure.

Before Paula, Rufinus declared that Orion was fully justified and he
loudly praised the young man's liberality in providing the Nile-boat
and the vessel for the sea-voyage, and such admirable substitutes for
himself. Pulcheria was delighted with her fath