e: uncommonly handsome, but haughty, repellent, unamiable, and--like
Heliodora herself--of the orthodox sect.--What could tempt "great
Sesostris" to give her the preference?

Katharina herself proposed to Martina to make them acquainted; but
nothing would have induced Dame Martina to go out of her rooms,
protected to the utmost from the torrid sunshine, so she left it to
Heliodora to pay the visit and give her a report of the hero's daughter.
Heliodora had devoted herself heart and soul to the little heiress, and
humored her on many points.

This was carried out. Katharina actually had the audacity to bring the
rivals together, even after she had reported to each all she knew of
Orion's position with regard to the other. It was exquisite sport;
still, in one respect it did not fulfil her intentions, for Paula gave
no sign of suffering the agonies of jealousy which Katharina had hoped
to excite in her. Heliodora, on the other hand, came home depressed and
uneasy; Paula had received her coldly and with polite formality, and the
young widow had remained fully aware that so remarkable a woman might
well cast her own image in Orion's heart into the shade, or supplant it
altogether.

Like a wounded man who, in spite of the anguish, cannot resist touching
the wound to assure himself of its state, Heliodora went constantly to
see Katharina in order to watch her rival from the garden or to be taken
to call on her, though she was always very coldly received.

At first Katharina had pitied the young woman whose superior in
intelligence she knew herself to be; but a certain incident had
extinguished this feeling; she now simply hated her, and pricked
her with needle-thrusts whenever she had a chance. Paula seemed
invulnerable; but there was not a pang which Katharina would not gladly
have given her to whom she owed the deepest humiliation her young life
had ever known. How was it that Paula failed to regard Heliodora as a
rival? She had reflected that, if Orion had really returned the widow's
passion, he could not have borne so long a separation. It was on purpose
to avoid Heliodora, and to remain faithful to what he was and must
always be to Paula, that he had gone with the senator, far from Memphis.
Heliodora--her instinct assured her--was the poor, forsaken woman with
whom he had trifled at Byzantium, and for whom he had committed that
fatal theft of the emerald. If Fate would but bring him home to her, and
if she then yield