The young criminal looked down in shame and confusion, and answered hesitatingly: 

“Orion asserted it so positively and clearly, and then—­I do not know what came over me—­but I was so angry, so—­I could have murdered her!”

“Whom?” asked Mary in surprise.  “You know very well:  Paula.”

“Paula!” said Mary, and her large eyes again filled with tears.  “Is it possible?  Did you not love her as much as I do?  Have not you often and often clung about her like a bur?”

“Yes, yes, very true.  But before the judges she was so intolerably proud, and then.—­But believe me, Mary you really and truly cannot understand anything of all this.”

“Can I not?” asked the child folding her arms.

“Why do you think me so stupid?”

“You are in love with Orion—­and he is a man whom few can match, over head and ears in love; and because Paula looks like a queen by the side of you, and is so much handsomer and taller than you are, and Orion, till yesterday—­I could see it all—­cared a thousand times more for her than for you, you were jealous and envious of her.  Oh, I know all about it.  —­And I know that all the women fall in love with him, and that Mandaile had her ears cut off on his account, and that it was a lady who loved him in Constantinople that gave him the little white dog.  The slave-girls tell me what they hear and what I like.—­And after all, you may well be jealous of Paula, for if she only made a point of it, how soon Orion would make up his mind never to look at you again!  She is the handsomest and the wisest and the best girl in the whole world, and why should she not be proud?  The false witness you bore will cost poor Hiram his life:  but the merciful Saviour may forgive you at last.  It is your affair, and no concern of mine; but when Paula is forced to leave the house and all through you, so that I shall never, never, never see her any more—­I cannot forget it, and I do not think I ever shall; but I will pray God to make me.”

She burst into loud sobs, and the governess had started up to put an end to a dialogue which she could not understand, and which was therefore vexatious and provoking, when the water-wagtail fell on her knees before the little girl, threw her arms round her, and bursting into tears, exclaimed: 

“Mary—­darling little Mary forgive me.

[The German has the diminutive ‘Mariechen’.  To this Dr. Ebers appends this note.  “An ignorant critic took exception to the use of the diminutive form of names (as for instance ‘Irenchen’, little Irene) in ‘The Sisters,’ as an anachronism.  It is nevertheless a fact that the Greeks settled in Egypt were so fond of using the diminutive form of woman’s names that they preferred them, even in the tax-rolls.  This form was common in Attic Greek,”]

Oh, if you could but know what I endured before I came out here!  Forgive me, Mary; be my sweet,