Happily she had not long to wait; Orion arrived in his mother’s four-wheeled covered chariot.  By the side of the driver sat a servant, and a slave was perched on the step to the door on each side of the vehicle.  It was followed by a few idlers, men and women, and a crowd of half-naked children.  But they got nothing by their curiosity, for the carruca did not draw up in the road, but was driven into Rufinus’ garden, and the trees and shrubs hid it from the gaze of the expectant mob, which presently dispersed.

Orion got out at the principal door of the house, followed by the treasurer; and while the old man welcomed the son of the Mukaukas, Nilus superintended the transfer of a considerable number of heavy sacks to their host’s private room.

Nothing of all this had seemed noteworthy to Katharina but the quantity and size of the bags—­full, no doubt, of gold—­and the man, whom alone she cared to see.  Never had she thought Orion so handsome; the long, flowing mourning robe, which he had flung over his shoulder in rich folds, added to the height of his stately form; his abundant hair, not curled but waving naturally, set off his face which, pale and grave as it was, both touched and attracted her ir resistibly.  The thought that this splendid creature had once courted her, loved her, kissed her—­that he had once been hers, and that she had lost him to another, was a pang like physical agony, mounting from her heart to her brain.

After Orion had vanished indoors, she still seemed to see him; and when she thrust his image from her fancy, forced to remind herself that he was now standing face to face with that other, and was looking at Paula as, a few days since, he had looked at her, the anguish of her soul was doubled.  And was Paula only half as happy as she had been in that hour of supreme bliss?  Ah! how her heart ached!  She longed to leap over the hedge—­she could have rushed into the house and flung herself between Paula and Orion.

Still, there she sat; restless but without moving; wholly under the dominion of evil thoughts, among which a good one rarely and timidly intruded, with her eyes fixed on Rufinus’ dwelling.  It stood in the broad sunshine as silent as death, as if all were sleeping.  In the garden, too, all was motionless but the thin jet of water, which danced up from the marble tank with a soft and fitful, but monotonous tinkle, while butterflies, dragonflies, bees, and beetles, whose hum she could not hear, seemed to circle round the flowers without a sound.  The birds must be asleep, for not one was to be seen or broke the oppressive stillness by a chirp or a twitter.  The chariot at the door might have been spellbound; the driver had dismounted, and he, with the other slaves, had stretched himself in the narrow strips of shade cast by the pillars of the verandah; their chins buried in their breasts, they spoke not a word.  The horses alone were stirring-flicking off the flies with their flowing tails, or turning to bite the burning stings they inflicted.  This now and then lifted the pole, and as the chariot crunched backwards a few inches, the charioteer growled out a sleepy “Brrr.”