then he added with a defiant glare, and in a husky voice: "Then
some one who had broken into the house has been startled and dropped
them. Our house-stamp is here on the leather: they were made in our
work-shop, and they still smell of the stable-here, Sebek, you can
convince yourself. Take them into your keeping, man; and tomorrow morning
we will see who has left this suspicious offering in our vestibule.--You
were the first to reach the spot, fair Paula. Did you see a man about?"

"Yes," she replied with a hostile and challenging stare.

"And which way did he go?"

"He fled across the viridarium like a coward, running across the poor,
well-kept grass-plot to save time, and vanished upstairs in the
dwelling-rooms."

Orion ground his teeth, and a mad hatred surged up in him of this mystery
in woman's form in whose power, as it seemed, his ruin lay, and whose
eyes mashed with revenge and the desire to undo him. What was she
plotting against him? Was there a being on earth who would dare to accuse
him, the spoilt favorite of great and small . . . ? And her look had meant
more than aversion, it had expressed contempt. . . . How dare she look so
at him? Who in the wide world had a right to accuse him of anything that
could justify such a feeling? Never, never had he met with enmity like
this, least of all from a girl. He longed to annihilate the high-handed,
cold-hearted, ungrateful creature who could humble him so outrageously
after he had allowed her to see that his heart was hers, and who could
make him quail--a man whose courage had been proved a hundred times. He
had to exercise his utmost self-control not to forget that she was a
woman.--What had happened? What demon had been playing tricks on
him--What had so completely altered him within this half-hour that his
whole being seemed subverted even to himself, and that any one dared to
treat him so?

His mother at once observed the terrible change that came over her son's
face when Paula declared that a man had fled towards the dwelling-rooms;
but she accounted for it in her own way, and exclaimed in genuine alarm:
"Towards the Nile-wing, the rooms where your father sleeps? Merciful
Heaven! suppose they have planned an attack there! Run--fly, Sebek.

"Go across with some armed men! Search the whole house from top to
bottom! Perhaps you will catch the rascal--he had trodden down the
grass--you must find him--you must not let him escape."

The steward hurried off,