Katharina watched her with tears in her eyes.  She felt that Mary was justified in disapproving of what she had done the day before; for she herself had been unable to sleep and had become more and more convinced that she had acted wrongly, nay, unpardonably.  And now again she had done an inexcusable thing.  She felt that she had deeply hurt the child’s feelings, and this sincerely grieved her.  She followed Mary in silence, at some little distance, like a maid-servant.  She longed to hold her back by her dress, to say something kind to her, nay, to ask her pardon.  As they drew near to the spot where the governess had dropped into her chair again, a hapless victim to the heat of Egypt, Katharina called Mary by her name, and when the child paid no heed, laid her hand on her shoulder, saying in gentle entreaty:  “Forgive me for having so far forgotten myself.  But how can I help being so little?  You know very well when any one laughs at me for it. . . .”

“You get angry and slap!” retorted the child, walking on.  “Yesterday, perhaps, I might have laughed over a box on the ear—­it is not the first—­or have given it to you back again; but to-day!—­Just now,” and she shuddered involuntarily, “just now I felt as if some black slave had laid his dirty hand on my cheek.  You are not what you were.  You walk quite differently, and you look—­depend upon it you do not look as nice and as bright as you used, and I know why:  You did a very bad thing last evening.”

“But dear pet,” said the other, “you must not be so hard.  Perhaps I did not really tell the judges everything I knew, but Orion, who loves me so, and whose wife I am to be. . . .”

“He led you into sin!—­Yes; and he was always merry and kind till yesterday; but since—­Oh, that unlucky day!”

Here she was interrupted by Eudoxia, who poured out a flood of reproaches and finally desired her to resume her task.  The child obeyed unresistingly; but she had scarcely settled to her wax tablets again when Katharina was by her side, whispering to her that Orion would certainly not have asserted anything that he did not believe to be true, and that she had really been in doubt as to whether a gem with a gold back, or a mere gold frame-work, had been hanging to Paula’s chain.  At this Mary turned sharply and quickly upon her, looked her straight in the eyes and exclaimed—­but in Egyptian that the governess might not understand, for she had disdained to learn a single word of it: 

“A rubbishy gold frame with a broken edge was hanging to the chain, and, what is more, it caught in your dress.  Why, I can see it now!  And, when you bore witness that it was a gem, you told a lie—­Look here; here are the laws which God Almighty himself gave on the sacred Mount of Sinai, and there it stands written:  ’Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.’  And those who do, the priest told me, are guilty of mortal sin, for which there is no forgiveness on earth or in Heaven, unless after bitter repentance and our Saviour’s special mercy.  So it is written; and you could actually declare before the judges a thing that was false, and that you knew would bring others to ruin?”