self
surrounded by a raging mob, dragged to the river and cast into a watery
grave before a thousand eyes. Then, prayer was of no avail, nor any
resolve or effort; not the tender messages that constantly reached her
from Orion, nor the songs he would sing for her in the brief moments of
leisure he allowed himself; not the bishop's words of comfort, nor the
visits of those she loved. The warder would admit her friends as often as
he was able; and among those who found their way to her cell were the
Senator Justinus and his wife.
By great good fortune Martina had quitted Susannah's house as soon as the
two slaves had fallen ill and she had heard that the physician pronounced
them to be sickening of the plague. She had returned to her rooms in the
inn kept by Sostratus, but her nephew Narses had remained with Katharina
and her mother. He was indeed intending to follow her with Heliodora;
but, by the time they were ready to set out, Susannah, too, had fallen a
victim to the pestilence and the authorities had forbidden all egress
from her house.
Heliodora might have succeeded in leaving in time, alone; but she would
not abandon her unfortunate brother-in-law; for he never felt easy but in
her presence, would allow no one else to wait on him, and would take
neither food nor drink unless they were offered him by her. Besides this,
the cavalry officer, once so stalwart, had in his weakness become
pathetically like her lost husband, and she knew that Narses had been the
first to love her, and that it was only for his brother's sake that he
had concealed his passion. Her motherly instincts found an outlet in the
care of the half-crushed, but not hopelessly lost man; and the desire to
drag him back to life kept her busy day and night, and made her regard
everything else as trivial and of secondary importance. Her life had once
more found a purpose; her efforts were for an attainable end, and she
devoted herself to him body and soul.
Her uncle had told her that Orion was bound to Paula by a supreme
passion.--This had been a painful blow, but the Syrian girl had impressed
her; she looked up to her, and it soothed her wounded self-esteem to
reflect that she had lost her lover to no inferior woman. Though her
longing for him still surged up in many a silent hour, she felt it an
injustice, a stint of love to her invalid charge.
So far as Katharina was concerned, next to her mother, Heliodora was the
object of her deepest anxiet
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