This was carried out.  Katharina actually had the audacity to bring the rivals together, even after she had reported to each all she knew of Orion’s position with regard to the other.  It was exquisite sport; still, in one respect it did not fulfil her intentions, for Paula gave no sign of suffering the agonies of jealousy which Katharina had hoped to excite in her.  Heliodora, on the other hand, came home depressed and uneasy; Paula had received her coldly and with polite formality, and the young widow had remained fully aware that so remarkable a woman might well cast her own image in Orion’s heart into the shade, or supplant it altogether.

Like a wounded man who, in spite of the anguish, cannot resist touching the wound to assure himself of its state, Heliodora went constantly to see Katharina in order to watch her rival from the garden or to be taken to call on her, though she was always very coldly received.

At first Katharina had pitied the young woman whose superior in intelligence she knew herself to be; but a certain incident had extinguished this feeling; she now simply hated her, and pricked her with needle-thrusts whenever she had a chance.  Paula seemed invulnerable; but there was not a pang which Katharina would not gladly have given her to whom she owed the deepest humiliation her young life had ever known.  How was it that Paula failed to regard Heliodora as a rival?  She had reflected that, if Orion had really returned the widow’s passion, he could not have borne so long a separation.  It was on purpose to avoid Heliodora, and to remain faithful to what he was and must always be to Paula, that he had gone with the senator, far from Memphis.  Heliodora—­her instinct assured her—­was the poor, forsaken woman with whom he had trifled at Byzantium, and for whom he had committed that fatal theft of the emerald.  If Fate would but bring him home to her, and if she then yielded all he asked—­all her own soul urged her to grant, then she would be the sole mistress and queen of his heart—­she must be, she was sure of it!  And though, even as she thought of it, she bowed her head in care, it was not from fear of losing him; it was only her anxiety about her father, her good old friend, Rufinus, and his family, whom she had made so entirely her own.

This was the state of affairs this morning, when to his old friend’s vexation, Philippus had so hastily and silently drunk off his after-breakfast draught; just as he set down the cup, the black door-keeper announced that a hump-backed man wished to see his master at once on important business.

“Important business!” repeated the leech.  “Give me four more legs in addition to my own two, or a machine to make time longer than it is, and then I will take new patients-otherwise no!  Tell the fellow. . . .”

“No, not sick. . . .” interrupted the negro.  “Come long way.  Gardener to Greek man Rufinus.”

Philippus started:  he could guess what this messenger had to say, and his heart sank with dread as he desired that he might be shown in.