When the bishop had taken his leave Katharina was merely desired to be ready in her best attire, with a nosegay in her hand, to receive the Patriarch under the awning spread outside the entrance.  More than this the widow did not require of her, and as the girl flew up the stairs to her room she was thinking:  “Orion will be coming directly:  it still wants fully two hours of noon, and if he stays there half an hour that will be more than enough.  I shall have time then to change my dress, but I will put my new sandals on at once as a precaution; nurse and the maid must wait for me in my room.  They must have everything ready for my return—­perhaps he and Paula may have much to say to each other.  He will not get off without a lecture, unless she has already found an opportunity elsewhere of expressing her indignation.”

A few minutes later she had sprung to the top of a mound of earth covered with turf, which she had some time since ordered to be thrown up close behind the hedge through which she had yesterday made her way.  Her little feet were shod with handsome gold sandals set with sapphires, and she seated herself on a low bench with a satisfied smile, as though to assist at a theatrical performance.  Some broad-leaved shrubs, placed behind this place of ambush, screened her to some extent from the heat of the sun, and as she sat watching and listening in this lurking place, which she was not using for the first time, her heart began to beat more quickly; indeed, in her excitement she quite forgot some sweetmeats which she had brought to wile away the time and had poured into a large leaf in her lap.

Happily she had not long to wait; Orion arrived in his mother’s four-wheeled covered chariot.  By the side of the driver sat a servant, and a slave was perched on the step to the door on each side of the vehicle.  It was followed by a few idlers, men and women, and a crowd of half-naked children.  But they got nothing by their curiosity, for the carruca did not draw up in the road, but was driven into Rufinus’ garden, and the trees and shrubs hid it from the gaze of the expectant mob, which presently dispersed.

Orion got out at the principal door of the house, followed by the treasurer; and while the old man welcomed the son of the Mukaukas, Nilus superintended the transfer of a considerable number of heavy sacks to their host’s private room.

Nothing of all this had seemed noteworthy to Katharina but the quantity and size of the bags—­full, no doubt, of gold—­and the man, whom alone she cared to see.  Never had she thought Orion so handsome; the long, flowing mourning robe, which he had flung over his shoulder in rich folds, added to the height of his stately form; his abundant hair, not curled but waving naturally, set off his face which, pale and grave as it was, both touched and attracted her ir resistibly.  The thought that this splendid creature had once courted her, loved her, kissed her—­that he had once been hers, and that she had lost him to another, was a pang like physical agony, mounting from her heart to her brain.