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In short, while he was doing all in his power to entrap me even the slaves in the barge observed it he was in the very act I heard it from Dame Neforis, who is only too glad when she can hurt me in the very act of suing for the hand of that little doll you know her little Katharina. She is his betrothed; and yet the shameless wretch dares to carry on his game with me; he has the face...."
Up to within a few days Katharina had still been a dependent and docile child, who had made it a point of honor to obey instantly, not only her mother's lightest word, but Dame Neforis, too; and, since her own Greek instructress had been dismissed, even the acid Eudoxia.
The bystanders could not fail to see the girl's repellent manner and Orion's eager attempts to propitiate her; and for this reason Neforis was glad when, just as her husband had finished the third game, and had pushed the men together on the board with the back of his hand, his chamberlain reminded him that the Arab was without, awaiting his pleasure with growing impatience.
She is a brave soul; how she fought for the poor fellow. I will hear more about it if my strength holds out. Why is she not here?" "She wished so much to bid you farewell," replied Neforis, "but you were asleep." "Was she in such a hurry to be gone?" asked her husband with a bitter smile. "Fear about the emerald may have had something to do with it? But how could I be angry with her?
"Neforis!" her husband said in mild reproach; and he would have reproved her more sharply but that since he had become a slave to opium he had lost all power of asserting himself vigorously whether in small matters or great. Ere long the Mukaukas had fallen into an uneasy sleep; but he opened his eyes more frequently than usual.
Her hand was still conscious of his burning kiss as she entered the cool room where the Lady Neforis sat awaiting the return of the party, turning her spinning-wheel by the couch of her invalid husband who always went to rest at late hours. It was with an overflowing heart that Paula raised her uncle's hand to her lips Orion's father, might she not say HER Orion's?
"She had come to the house for several reasons, but one had outweighed all the rest: Mary must be told that her young uncle and Paula were betrothed; for she knew by experience that the child could keep nothing of importance from her grandmother, and that Neforis had no love for Paula was an open secret.
"Then why do you not cut them out of the tissue?" asked Neforis. "Because I cannot bear to destroy this noble work," replied the Arab. "I will sell it as it is or not at all." At these words the Mukaukas nodded to his son, heedless of the disapprobation his wife persisted in expressing, asked for a tablet which lay near the chessboard, and on it wrote a few words.
While he stood telling her of what had happened at the governor's house, he noted how deeply, for Paula's and Mary's sake, she took to heart the widow's death, though Neforis had been nothing to her; and he decided that he would at once make Pulcheria's mother acquainted with her dead husband's wishes.
Here her husband interrupted her with an angry exclamation: "Leave the girl quite out of the question wife!" "As if I supposed her to be the thief!" retorted Neforis indignantly, and she shrugged her shoulders as Orion, in mild reproach, also cried: "Mother! consider . . ." and the merchant asked: "Do you mean the young girl from whom I had to take such hard words last night?
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