The girls had learnt to obey, and they hurried past the matron to their sleeping-quarters.  Perpetua, a woman scarcely past fifty, whose face wore a pleasant expression of mingled shrewdness and kindness, stood pricking up her ears and listening; she heard from the water-shed a peculiar low, long-drawn Wheeuh!—­a signal with which she was familiar as that by which the prefect Thomas had been wont to call together his scattered household from the garden of his villa on Mount Lebanon.  It was now Paula who gave the whistle to attract her nurse’s attention.

Perpetua shook her head anxiously.  What could have brought her beloved child to see her at so late an hour?  Something serious must have occurred, and with characteristic presence of mind she called out, to show that she had heard Paula’s signal:  “Now, make haste.  Will you be quick?  Wheeuh! girls—­wheeuh!  Hurry, hurry!”

She followed the last of the slave-girls into the sleeping-room, and when she had assured herself that they were all there but the crazy Persian she enquired where she was.  They had all seen her a few minutes ago in the shed; so she bid them good-night and left them, letting it be understood that she was about to seek the missing girl.

CHAPTER VII.

Paula went into her nurse’s room, and Perpetua, after a short and vain search for the crazy girl, abandoned her to her fate, not without some small scruples of conscience.

A beautifully-polished copper lamp hung from the ceiling and the little room exactly suited its mistress both were neat and clean, trim and spruce, simple and yet nice.  Snowy transparent curtains enclosed the bed as a protection against the mosquitoes, a crucifix of delicate workmanship hung above the head of the couch, and the seats were covered with good cloth of various colors, fag-ends from the looms.  Pretty straw mats lay on the floor, and pots of plants, filling the little room with fragrance, stood on the window-sill and in a corner of the room where a clay statuette of the Good Shepherd looked down on a praying-desk.

The door had scarcely closed behind them when Perpetua exclaimed:  “But child, how you frightened me!  At so late an hour!”

“I felt I must come,” said Paula.  I could contain myself no longer.”

“What, tears?” sighed the woman, and her own bright little eyes twinkled through moisture.  “Poor soul, what has happened now?”

She went up to the young girl to stroke her hair, but Paula rushed into her arms, clung passionately round her neck, and burst into loud and bitter weeping.  The little matron let her weep for a while; then she released herself, and wiped away her own tears and those of her tall darling, which had fallen on her smooth grey hair.  She took Paula’s chin in a firm hand and turned her face towards her own, saying tenderly but decidedly:  “There, that is enough.  You might cry and welcome, for it eases the heart, but that it is so late.  Is it the old story:  home-sickness, annoyances, and so forth, or is there anything new?”