So far as Katharina was concerned, next to her mother, Heliodora was the object of her deepest anxiety.  The least word of complaint from either terrified her; and if Susannah sank on the divan exhausted by the heat, or Heliodora had a headache after watching through the night by the sick man, the girl would turn pale, her heart would beat painfully, she would paint them in fancy stricken by the plague, with burning brows and the horrible, fatal spots on their foreheads and cheeks; and whenever these alarms pressed on the young criminal she felt the ominous weight on the top of her head where the dead bishop’s hand had rested.

The senator’s wife had so completely changed in her demeanor to the water-wagtail, since Paula’s imprisonment, that to Katharina she was as a living reproach, so she had no regret at seeing the worthy pair depart.  But scarcely had they left when misfortune took their place as an unbidden guest.

The slave whose duty it was to heat the baths had reserved a portion of the infected garments that had been given to him to burn; his son had helped him, and Katharina’s nurse, the mother of her foster-brother Anubis, had come into direct contact with her immediately after her return from the soothsayer’s and from the bishop’s.  All three had caught the disease.  They had all three been removed to the hospital tents—­the slave and the nurse as corpses.

But had the fearful infection been taken away with them?  If not, it would be the turn next of those whom she herself had pushed into the arms of the fell monster:  First Heliodora, and then her mother!  And she, rightfully, ought to have fallen before them; and if the pestilence should seize her and death should drag her down into the grave it would be showing her mercy.  She was still so young, and yet she hated life.  It had nothing in store for her but humiliation and disappointment, arrows which, sent from the prison, pierced her to the heart, and a torturing fear which never gave her any peace, day or night.

When the physician came to transport the sick to the hospital in the desert, he mentioned incidentally that the judges had condemned Paula to death, and that the populace and senate, in spite of the new bishop’s prohibition, had determined to cast her into the river in accordance with an ancient custom.  Orion’s fate was not to be decided till the following day; but it would hardly be to his advantage in the eyes of his Jacobite judges, that his betrothed was this Syrian Melchite.

At this Katharina was forced to support herself against her mother’s arm-chair to save herself from sinking on her knees; with tingling cheeks she questioned the leech till he lost all patience and turned away much annoyed at such excessive feminine curiosity.