It was not till they reached the garden-gate that they observed what was going on around them.  There they found the gardener and all the household, anxiously watching for the return of their belated mistress.  Eudoxia too was waiting for them with some alarm.  In the house they were met by Horapollo, but Joanna and Pulcheria returned his greeting with a cold bow, while Mary purposely turned her back on him.  The old man shrugged his shoulders with regretful annoyance, and in the solitude of his own room he muttered to himself: 

“Oh, that woman!  She will be the ruin even of the peaceful days I hoped to enjoy during the short remainder of my life!”

The widow and her daughter for some time sat talking of Mary.  She had bid them good-night as devotedly and tenderly as though they were parting for life.  Poor child!  She had forebodings of the terrible fate to which the bishop, and perhaps her own mother had predestined her.

But Mary did not look as if she were going to meet misfortune; Eudoxia, who slept by her side, was rejoiced on the contrary at seeing her so gay; only she was surprised to see the child, who usually fell asleep as soon as her little head was on the pillow, lying awake so long this evening.  The elderly Greek, who suffered from a variety of little ailments and always went to sleep late, could not help watching the little girl’s movements.

What was that?  Between midnight and dawn Mary sprang from her bed, threw on her clothes, and stole into the next room with the night-lamp in her hand.  Presently a brighter light shone through the door-way.  She must have lighted a lamp,-and presently, hearing the door of the sitting-room opened, Eudoxia rose and noiselessly watched her.  Mary immediately returned, carrying a boy’s clothes—­a suit, in point of fact, which Pulcheria and Eudoxia had lately been making as a Sunday garb—­for the lame gardener’s boy.  The child smilingly tried on the little blue tunic; then, after tossing the clothes into a chest, she sat down at the table to write.  But she seemed to have set herself some hard task; for now she looked down at the papyrus and rubbed her forehead, and now she gazed thoughtfully into vacancy.  She had written a few sentences when she started up, called Eudoxia by name, and went towards the sleeping-room.

Eudoxia went forward to meet her; Mary threw herself into her arms, and before her governess could ask any questions she told her that she had been chosen to accomplish a great and important action.  She had been intending to wake her, to make her her confidant and to ask her advice.

How sweet and genuine it all sounded, and how charmingly confused she seemed in spite of the ardent zeal that inspired her!