It was undoubtedly in the young man’s handwriting and addressed to Paula, and the final words:  “But do not misunderstand me.  Your noble, and only too well-founded desire to lend succor to your fellow-believers would have sufficed....” could not fail to make a deep impression.  When the Kadi questioned Paula, however, she replied with perfect truth that this document was absolutely unknown to her; at the same time she did not deny that the sisters of St. Cecilia, who were of her own confession, had always had her warmest wishes, and that she had hoped they might succeed in asserting their rights in opposition to the patriarch.

The deceased Mukaukas, and the Jacobite members of the town-council even, had shared these feelings and the Arabs had never interfered with the pious sicknurses.

The calm conciseness with which she made these statements had a favorable effect, on her Moslem judges especially, and the Kadi began to have some hopes for her; he desired that Orion should be called as being best able to account for the meaning of the letter he had written but never sent.

On this the young man appeared, and though he and Paula did their utmost to preserve a suitable demeanor, every one could see the violent agitation they felt at meeting each other in such a situation.  Horapollo never took his eyes off Orion, whom he now saw for the first time, and his features put on a darkening and menacing expression.

The young man acknowledged that he had written the letter in question, but he and Paula alike referred it to the danger with which the sisterhood had long been threatened from the patriarch’s hostility.  The assistance which, in that document, he had refused he would have afforded readily and zealously at a later and fit season, and he could have counted on the aid of the Arab governor Amru, who, as he would himself confirm, shared the views of the Mukaukas George as to the nuns’ rights.

At this the old sage murmured loud enough to be heard:  “Clever, very clever!” and the Vekeel laughed aloud, exclaiming: 

“I call that a cunning way of lengthening your days!  Be on your guard, my lords.  These two are partners in the game and are intimately allied.  I have proof of that in my own hands.  That youngster takes as good care of the damsel’s fortune as though it were his own already, and what is more. . . .”

Here Paula broke in.  She did not know what the malicious man was going to say, but it was something insulting beyond a doubt.  And there stood Orion, just as she had pictured him in moments of tender remembrance; she felt his eye resting on her in ecstasy.  To go up to him, to tell him all she was feeling in this critical struggle for life or death, seemed impossible; but as the Vekeel began to disclose to their judges matters which concerned only herself and her lover, every impulse prompted her to interpose and, in this fateful hour, to do her friend such service as she once, like a coward, had shrank from.  So with eager emotion, her eyes flashing, she interrupted the negro “Stop!” she cried, “you are wasting words and trouble.  What you are trying to prove by subtlety I am proud and glad to declare.  Hear it, all of you.  The son of the Mukaukas is my betrothed!”