It was very hot, and yet a cold shiver ran through her slender frame.  Was she now attacked by the pestilence?  No; it would be too merciful of Fate to take such pity on her woes.

The mother was dead, dragged to the grave by her own daughter.  The disease had first shown itself on her lips; and how many times had the physician expressed his surprise at the plague having broken out in this healthy quarter of the town, and in a house kept so scrupulously clean.  She knew at whose bidding the avenging angel had entered there, and whose criminal guile had trifled with him.  The words “murdered your mother” haunted her, and she remembered the law of the ancients which refused to prescribe a punishment for the killing of parents, because they considered such a monstrous deed impossible.

A scornful smile curled her lip.  Laws!  Principles!  Was there one that she had not defied?  She had contemned God, meddled with magic, borne false witness, committed murder—­and as to the one law with promise, which, if Philippus was right, was exactly the same in the code of her forefathers as on the tables of Moses, how had she kept that?  Her own mother was no more, and by her act!

All through this frightful retrospect she had never ceased to shiver and, as this was becoming unendurable, she took to walking up and down and seeking excuses for her sinful doings:  It was not her mother, but Heliodora whom she had wished to kill; why had malicious Fate....?

Here she was interrupted, for the young widow, who had heard the sad news, sought her out to comfort her and offer her services.  She spoke to the girl with real affection; but her sweet, low tones reminded Katharina of that evening after the old bishop’s death; and when Heliodora put out her arm to draw her to her, she shrank from her, begging her in a dry, hoarse voice, not to touch her for her clothes were infected.  She wanted no comfort; all she asked was to be left alone—­ quite alone—­nothing more.  The words were hard and unkind, and as the door closed on the young woman Katharina’s eyes glared after her.

Why had this doom passed over Heliodora’s head and demanded the sacrifice of one whose loss she could never cease to mourn?

This brought her mother vividly to her mind.  She flew back to her death-bed and fell on her knees—­but even there she could not bear to stay long, so she wandered into the garden and visited every spot where she and her mother had been together.  But there were such strange crackings in the shrubs, and the trees and bushes cast such uncanny shadows that she hailed daybreak as a deliverance.

She was on her way back to the house when her foster-brother Anubis came limping to meet her.  Poor fellow!  She had made a cripple of him, too, and his mother had died through her fault.