but Paula’s soul was closed against these charms.  The sequestered silence lent a threatening accent to the furious wrangling in the court-yard, which was audible even here in bursts of uproar; and it was with an anxious heart that she observed that everything was not in its usual order; for her sharp eyes could discern no one, nothing, at the entrance to the tablinum, which was usually guarded by an armed sentinel or by the watch-dog; and surely—­ yes, she was not mistaken—­the bronze doors were open, and the moon shone on the bright metal of one half which stood ajar.

She stopped, and Hiram behind her did the same.  They both listened with such tension that the veins in their foreheads swelled; but from the tablinum, which was hardly thirty paces from them, came only very faint and intermittent sounds, indistinct in character and drowned by the tumult without.

A few long and anxious minutes, and then the half-closed door was suddenly opened and a man came forth.  Paula’s heart stood still, but she did not for an instant lose her keenness of vision; she at once and positively recognized the man who came out of the tablinum as Orion and none other, and the big, long-haired dog too came out and past him, sniffed the air and then, with a loud bark, rushed on the two watchers.  Trembling and with clenched teeth, but still mistress of herself, she let him come close to her, and then, calling him by his name:  “Beki” in low, caressing tones, as soon as he recognized her, she laid her hand on his shaggy head to scratch his ears, as he loved it done.

Paula and her companion were standing behind a column in the deepest shadow.  Thus Orion could not see her, and the dog’s loud bark had prevented his hearing her coaxing call; so when Beki was quiet and stood still, Orion whistled to him.  The obedient and watchful beast, ran back, wagging his tail; and his master, greeting him as “a stupid old cat-hunter,” let him spring over his arm, hugged the creature and then pushed him off again in play.  Then he closed the door and went into the apartments leading to the courtyard.

“But he must come back this way to go to his own rooms,” said Paula to her companion with a sigh of relief.  “We must wait.  But now we must not lose a minute.  Come over to the door of the tablinum.  The dog will know me now and will not bark again.”  They hastened on, and when they had reached the door, which lay in shadow within a deep doorway, Paula asked her companion:  “Did you see who the man was who came out?”

“My lord Orion,” said Hiram.  “He was co—­co—­coming home from the town when I preceded you across the yard.”

“Indeed?” she said with apparent indifference, and as she leaned against the cold metal door-panels she looked back into the garden and thought she was now free to return.  She would describe to the freedman the way he must now go—­it was quite simple; but she had not had time to do so when, from a room dividing the viridarium from the vestibule she heard first a woman’s shrill voice; then the deeper tones of a man; and hardly had they exchanged a few sentences, when every sound was lost in the furious barking of the hound, and immediately after a loud shriek of pain from a woman fell upon her ear, and the noise of a heavy object falling to the ground.