How well her little surprise had succeeded!

But what came over the child?  She started to her feet as if lightning had struck her, as if an asp had stung her, looked horror-stricken into her mother’s eyes, and then, as Susannah was on the point of clasping the little head to her bosom once more to kiss the aching, the cursed spot, Katharina pushed her away, flew, distracted, through the sitting-room into the vestibule, and down the narrow steps leading to the bathroom.

Her mother looked after her, shaking her head in bewilderment.  Then she turned to Heliodora with a shrug, and said, as the tears filled her eyes: 

“Poor, poor little thing!  Too many troubles have come upon her at once.  Her life till lately was like a long, sunny day, and now the hail is pelting her from all sides at once.  She has bad news of the bishop, I fear.”

“He is dying, she said,” replied the young widow with feeling.

“Our best and truest friend,” sobbed Susannah.  “It is, it really is too much.  I often think that I must myself succumb, and as for her—­hardly more than a child!—­And with what resignation she bears the heaviest sorrows!—­You, Heliodora, are far from knowing what she has gone through; but you have no doubt seen how her only thought is to seem bright, so as to cheer my heart.  Not a sigh, not a complaint has passed her lips.  She submits like a saint to everything, without a murmur.  But, now that her clear old friend is stricken, she has lost her self-control for the first time.  She knows all that Plotinus has been to me.”  And she broke down into fresh sobbing.  When she was a little calmer, she apologised for her weakness and bid her fair guest good night.

Katharina, meanwhile, was taking a bath.

A bathroom was an indispensable adjunct to every wealthy Graeco-Egyptian house, and her father had taken particular pains with its construction.  It consisted of two chambers, one for men and one for women; both fitted with equal splendor.

White marble, yellow alabaster, purple porphyry on all sides; while the pavement was of fine Byzantine mosaic on a gold ground.  There were no statues, as in the baths of the heathen; the walls were decorated with bible texts in gold letters, and above the divan, which was covered with a giraffe skin, there was a crucifix.  On the middle panel of the coffered ceiling was inscribed defiantly, in the Coptic language the first axiom of the Jacobite creed:  “We believe in the single, indivisible nature of Christ Jesus.”  And below this hung silver lamps.

The large bath had been filled immediately for Katharina, as the furnace was heated every evening for the ladies of the house.  As she was undressing, her maid showed her a diseased date.  The head gardener, had brought it to her, for he had that afternoon, discovered that his palms, too, had been attacked.  But the woman soon regretted her loquacity, for when she went on to say that Anchhor, the worthy shoemaker