“Go across with some armed men!  Search the whole house from top to bottom!  Perhaps you will catch the rascal—­he had trodden down the grass—­you must find him—­you must not let him escape.”

The steward hurried off, but Paula begged the head gardener, who had come in with the rest, to compare the foot-prints of the fugitive, which must. yet be visible on the damp grass, with the shoes; her heart beat wildly, and again she tried to catch the young man’s eye.  Orion, however, started forward and went into the viridarium, saying as he went:  “That is my concern.”

But he was ashamed of himself, and felt as if something tight was throttling him.  In his own eyes he appeared like a thief caught in the act, a traitor, a contemptible rascal; and he began to perceive that he was indeed no longer what he had been before he had committed that fatal deed in the tablinum.

Paula breathed hard as she watched him go out.  Had he sunk so low as to falsify the evidence, and to declare that the groom’s broad sole fitted the tracks of his small and shapely feet?  She hated him, and yet she could have found it in her heart to pray that this, at least, he might not do; and when he came back and said in some confusion that he could not be sure, that the shoes did not seem exactly to fit the foot-marks, she drew a breath of relief and turned again to the wounded girl and the physician, who, had now made his appearance.  Before Neforis followed her example she drew Orion aside and anxiously asked him what ailed him, he looked so pale and upset.  He only said with some hesitation:  “That poor girl’s fate. . . .” and he pointed to the Persian slave.—­“It troubles me.”

“You are so soft-hearted—­you were as a boy!” said his mother soothingly.  She had seen the moisture sparkling in his eyes; but his tears were not for the Persian, but for the mysterious something—­he himself knew not what to call it—­that he had forfeited in this last hour, and of which the loss gave him unspeakable pain.

But their dialogue was interrupted:  the first misfortune of this luckless night had brought its attendant:  the body of Rustem, the splendid and radiantly youthful Rustem, the faithful Persian leader of the caravan, was borne into the hall, senseless.  He had made some satirical remark on the quarrel over creeds, and a furious Jacobite had fallen upon him with a log of wood, and dealt him a deep and perhaps mortal wound.  The leech at once gave him his care, and several of the crowd of muttering and whispering men, who had made their way in out of curiosity or with a wish to be of use, now hurried hither and thither in obedience to the physician’s orders.

As soon as he saw the Masdakite’s wound he exclaimed angrily: 

“A true Egyptian blow, dealt from behind!—­What does this mob want here?  Out with every man who does not belong to the place!  The first things needed are litters.  Will you, Dame Neforis, desire that two rooms may be got ready; one for that poor, gentle creature, and one for this fine fellow, though all will soon be over with him, short of a miracle.”