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I could wish I had chosen another hour for visiting you. 'It was well chosen, said Heliodora, regarding him fixedly. 'This slave I have chastised, shall I tell you of what he was guilty? He has a blabbing tongue. 'I see not how that concerns me, was his cold reply, as he met her look with steady indifference.
She had a vision of herself as some one else, taller and stronger than she was; aye, as Death itself, the destroyer, breathing herself into her victim's breast. These feelings entirely possessed her as she knelt on the soft carpet, and she did not notice that another woman was crossing it noiselessly to her comforter's bed-side, with a glance of intelligence at Heliodora.
Within a few hours of the young Egyptian's departure, they received a letter from the youth they had given up for lost, written in trembling characters, in which he implored them to effect his deliverance through Amru, the Arab governor of Egypt. The old people had set forth at once on their pilgrimage, and Heliodora had done her part in urging them to this step.
'Pardon our hasty entrance, fair Heliodora, he said in Greek. 'The commander has need of you on pressing business. 'The commander must wait my leisure, she replied with a note of indignation over-emphasised. 'Nay, that he cannot, returned the officer, leering at Sagaris. 'He is even now at supper, and will take it ill if you be not there when he rises from table. A litter waits.
Orion called Katharina and introduced her to his guests, and the girl explained what had brought her hither; in such a sweet and pathetic manner for she was sincerely fond of her foster-brother and play-fellow that she quite charmed Martina and Heliodora, and the younger woman expressed a hope that they might see her often. Indeed, when she was gone, Martina exclaimed: "A charming little thing!
During one of the pauses of the festival, when places were changed, and limbs stretched, some one whispered to her that she was invited to step towards that place of honour where sat the Emperor's representative. An invitation of Bessas could not lightly be declined, nor had Heliodora any reluctance to obey such a summons.
"Yes," replied Katharina. "I have been to see our dear old bishop. He is very ill, dying; he will soon be taken from us. Oh, what a fearful day! First Orion's mother, then Paula, and now this to crown all! Oh, Heliodora, Heliodora!" She fell on her knees by the bed and pressed her face against her pitying friend's bosom.
Heliodora was lying on her couch, still suffering from a headache which had prevented her going to visit their neighbors; at first she did not notice the late visitor who stood by her side and bid her good evening. A single lamp shed a dim light in the spacious room, and the young girl had never thought their guest so lovely as she looked in that twilight.
That a woman might look with ardent eyes on more than one man in the same moment, seemed to Sagaris the simplest of facts; he consequently found it easy to believe that, even whilst loving Marcian, Heliodora should have conceived a tenderness for Marcian's slave.
"A magnificent stone!" cried Orion. "Even Heliodora has nothing to equal it. Well, father, what do you say is its value?" "Great, very great," replied the Mukaukas. "And yet the whole unmutilated work would be too small an offering for Him to whom I propose to offer it." "To the great general, Amru?" asked Orion. "No child," said the governor decidedly.
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