Nay, if need be, she would take the veil and mourn away the rest of her young life as a penitent, in a convent or a solitary rock-cell.  But now—­when Paula, his betrothed, had done this great thing for him—­to perish now, with her love unseen, unknown, uncared for, perhaps forgotten by him, to retire into herself and vanish from his ken—­that was too much for human nature!  Sooner would she be lost forever; body and soul in everlasting perdition, a prey to Satan and hell—­in which she believed as firmly as in her own existence.

So she went on nursing her mother, saw the red spots spread over the sick woman’s whole body—­watched the fever that increased from day to day, from hour to hour; listened with a mixture of horror and gladness—­at which she herself shuddered, though she fed her heart on it—­to the reports of the preparations for the sacrifice of the Bride of the Nile, and to all the bishop could tell her of Paula, and her dying father, and Orion.  She trembled for little Mary, who had disappeared from the neighboring garden, till she heard that the child had fled to escape the cloister; each day she learnt that Heliodora, who had moved to the gardener’s house with her invalid, had as yet escaped the pestilence; while in the prayers, which even now she never failed to offer up morning and evening, she implored the Almighty and her patron saints to rescue the young widow, to save her from causing the death of her own mother, and to forgive her for having indirectly caused that of worthy old Rufinus, who had always been so good to her, and of so many innocent creatures by her treachery.

Thus the terrible days and nights of anguish passed by; and the captives whom the girl’s sins had brought to prison were happier than she, in spite of the doom that threatened them.

The fate of his betrothed tortured Orion more than a hundred aching wounds.  Paula’s terrible end was fast approaching, and his brain burned at the mere thought.  Now, as he was told by the warder, by the bishop, and by Justinus, the day after to-morrow was fixed for the bridal of his betrothed.  In two days the bride, decked by base and mocking hands for an atrocious and accursed farce, would be wreathed and wedded, not to him, the bridegroom whom she loved, but to the Nile—­the insensible, death-dealing element.  He rushed up and down his cell like a madman, and tore his lute-strings when he tried to soothe his soul with music; but then a calm, well-intentioned voice would come from the adjoining room, exhorting him not to lose hope, to trust in God, not to forget his duty and the task before him.  And Orion would control himself resolutely, pull himself together, and throw himself into his work again.