“You need not be frightened, daughter of a hero.  The young lord is not here himself, he prefers, it would seem, to treat with you by letter; and it is best so for both parties.”

Paula nodded agreement; she took the roll, and then, while she tore the silken tie from the seal, she turned her back on the old man; for she felt that the blood had faded from her face, and her hands were trembling.

“The messenger awaits an answer,” remarked Rufinus, before she began to read it.  “I shall be below and at your service.”  He left; Paula returned to the sick-room, and leaning against the frame of the casement, read as follows, with eager agitation: 

“Orion, the son of George the Mukaukas who sleeps in the Lord, to his cousin the daughter of the noble Thomas of Damascus, greeting.

“I have destroyed several letters that I had written to you before this one.”  Paula shrugged her shoulders incredulously.  “I hope I may succeed better this time in saying what I feel to be indispensable for your welfare and my own.  I have both to crave a favor and offer counsel.”

“Counsel! he!” thought the girl with a scornful curl of the lips, as she went on.  “May the memory of the man who loved you as his daughter, and who on his death-bed wished for nothing so much as to see you—­averse as he was to your creed—­and bless you as his daughter indeed, as his son’s wife,—­may the remembrance of that just man so far prevail over your indignant and outraged soul that these words from the most wretched man on earth, for that am I, Paula, may not be left unread.  Grant me the last favor I have to ask of you—­I demand it in my father’s name.”

“Demand!” repeated the damsel; her cheeks flamed, her eye sparkled angrily, and her hands clutched the opposite sides of the letter as though to tear it across.  But the next words:  “Do not fear,” checked her hasty impulse—­she smoothed out the papyrus and read on with growing excitement: 

“Do not fear that I shall address you as a lover—­as the man for whom there is but one woman on earth.  And that one can only be she whom I have so deeply injured, whom I fought with as frantic, relentless, and cruel weapons as ever I used against a foe of my own sex.”

“But one,” murmured the girl; she passed her hand across her brow, and a faint smile of happy pride dwelt on her lips as she went on: 

“I shall love you as long as breath animates this crushed and wretched heart.”

Again the letter was in danger of destruction, but again it escaped unharmed, and Paula’s expression became one of calm and tender pleasure as she read to the end of Orion’s clearly written epistle: 

“I am fully conscious that I have forfeited your esteem, nay even all good feeling towards me, by my own fault; and that, unless divine love works some miracle in your heart, I have sacrificed all joy on earth.  You are revenged; for it was for your sake—­understand that—­for your sake alone, that my beloved and dying father withdrew the blessings he had heaped on my remorseful head, and in wrath that was only too just at the recreant who had desecrated the judgment-seat of his ancestors, turned that blessing to a curse.”