his betrothed, had done this great thing for him--to perish now, with her
love unseen, unknown, uncared for, perhaps forgotten by him, to retire
into herself and vanish from his ken--that was too much for human nature!
Sooner would she be lost forever; body and soul in everlasting perdition,
a prey to Satan and hell--in which she believed as firmly as in her own
existence.

So she went on nursing her mother, saw the red spots spread over the sick
woman's whole body--watched the fever that increased from day to day,
from hour to hour; listened with a mixture of horror and gladness--at
which she herself shuddered, though she fed her heart on it--to the
reports of the preparations for the sacrifice of the Bride of the Nile,
and to all the bishop could tell her of Paula, and her dying father, and
Orion. She trembled for little Mary, who had disappeared from the
neighboring garden, till she heard that the child had fled to escape the
cloister; each day she learnt that Heliodora, who had moved to the
gardener's house with her invalid, had as yet escaped the pestilence;
while in the prayers, which even now she never failed to offer up morning
and evening, she implored the Almighty and her patron saints to rescue
the young widow, to save her from causing the death of her own mother,
and to forgive her for having indirectly caused that of worthy old
Rufinus, who had always been so good to her, and of so many innocent
creatures by her treachery.

Thus the terrible days and nights of anguish passed by; and the captives
whom the girl's sins had brought to prison were happier than she, in
spite of the doom that threatened them.

The fate of his betrothed tortured Orion more than a hundred aching
wounds. Paula's terrible end was fast approaching, and his brain burned