Orion ground his teeth, and a mad hatred surged up in him of this mystery in woman’s form in whose power, as it seemed, his ruin lay, and whose eyes mashed with revenge and the desire to undo him.  What was she plotting against him?  Was there a being on earth who would dare to accuse him, the spoilt favorite of great and small . . . ?  And her look had meant more than aversion, it had expressed contempt. . . .  How dare she look so at him?  Who in the wide world had a right to accuse him of anything that could justify such a feeling?  Never, never had he met with enmity like this, least of all from a girl.  He longed to annihilate the high-handed, cold-hearted, ungrateful creature who could humble him so outrageously after he had allowed her to see that his heart was hers, and who could make him quail—­a man whose courage had been proved a hundred times.  He had to exercise his utmost self-control not to forget that she was a woman.—­What had happened?  What demon had been playing tricks on him—­What had so completely altered him within this half-hour that his whole being seemed subverted even to himself, and that any one dared to treat him so?

His mother at once observed the terrible change that came over her son’s face when Paula declared that a man had fled towards the dwelling-rooms; but she accounted for it in her own way, and exclaimed in genuine alarm:  “Towards the Nile-wing, the rooms where your father sleeps?  Merciful Heaven! suppose they have planned an attack there!  Run—­fly, Sebek.

“Go across with some armed men!  Search the whole house from top to bottom!  Perhaps you will catch the rascal—­he had trodden down the grass—­you must find him—­you must not let him escape.”

The steward hurried off, but Paula begged the head gardener, who had come in with the rest, to compare the foot-prints of the fugitive, which must. yet be visible on the damp grass, with the shoes; her heart beat wildly, and again she tried to catch the young man’s eye.  Orion, however, started forward and went into the viridarium, saying as he went:  “That is my concern.”

But he was ashamed of himself, and felt as if something tight was throttling him.  In his own eyes he appeared like a thief caught in the act, a traitor, a contemptible rascal; and he began to perceive that he was indeed no longer what he had been before he had committed that fatal deed in the tablinum.

Paula breathed hard as she watched him go out.  Had he sunk so low as to falsify the evidence, and to declare that the groom’s broad sole fitted the tracks of his small and shapely feet?  She hated him, and yet she could have found it in her heart to pray that this, at least, he might not do; and when he came back and said in some confusion that he could not be sure, that the shoes did not seem exactly to fit the foot-marks, she drew a breath of relief and turned again to the wounded girl and the physician, who, had now made his appearance.  Before Neforis followed her example she drew Orion aside and anxiously asked him what ailed him, he looked so pale and upset.  He only said with some hesitation:  “That poor girl’s fate . . .” and he pointed to the Persian slave.—­“It troubles me.”