The senator’s wife, Martina, also required his visits to the palace.  She was not actually ill, but she suffered cruelly from the heat, and she had always been wont to see her worthy old house-physician every day, to hear all the latest gossip, and complain of her little ailments when anything went wrong with her usually sound health.  Philippus was indeed too much overburdened to chatter, but his professional advice was good and helped her to endure the fires of this pitiless sky.  She liked this incisive, shrewd, plain-spoken man—­often indeed sharp and abrupt in his freedom—­and he appreciated her bright, natural ways.  Now and then Martina even succeeded in winning a smile from “Hermes Trismegistus,” who was “generally as solemn as though there was no such thing on earth as a jest,” and in spurring him to a rejoinder which showed that this dolorous being had a particularly keen and ready wit.

Heliodora attracted him but little.  There was, to be sure, an unmistakable likeness in her “imploring eyes” to those of Pulcheria; but the girl’s spoke fervent yearning for the grace and love of God, while the widow’s expressed an eager desire for the admiration of the men she preferred.  She was a graceful creature beyond all question, but such softness, which never even attempted to assert a purpose or an opinion, did not commend itself to his determined nature; it annoyed him, when he had contradicted her, to hear her repeat his last statement and take his side, as if she were ashamed of her own silliness.  Her society, indeed, did not seem to satisfy the clever older woman, who at home, was accustomed to a succession of visitors, and to whom the word “evening” was synonymous with lively conversation and a large gathering.  She spoke of the leech’s visits as the oasis in the Egyptian desert, and little Katharina even she regarded as a Godsend.

The water-wagtail was her daily visitant, and the girl’s gay and often spiteful gossip helped to beguile her during this terrific heat.  Katharina’s mother made no difficulties; for Heliodora had gone to see her in all her magnificence, and had offered her and her daughter hospitality, some day, at Constantinople.  They were very likely going thither; at any rate they would not remain in Memphis, and then it would be a piece of good fortune to be introduced to the society of the capital by such people as their new acquaintances.

Martina thus heard a great deal about Paula; and though it was all adverse and colored to her prejudice she would have liked to see the daughter of the great and famous Thomas whom she had known; besides, after all she had heard, she could fear nothing from Paula for her niece:  uncommonly handsome, but haughty, repellent, unamiable, and—­like Heliodora herself—­of the orthodox sect.—­What could tempt “great Sesostris” to give her the preference?

Katharina herself proposed to Martina to make them acquainted; but nothing would have induced Dame Martina to go out of her rooms, protected to the utmost from the torrid sunshine, so she left it to Heliodora to pay the visit and give her a report of the hero’s daughter.  Heliodora had devoted herself heart and soul to the little heiress, and humored her on many points.