occupation, and she had therefore volunteered to instruct the little
girl in the art. At first her hosts had seemed pleased that she should
render this service, but ere long the relation between the Lady Neforis
and her husband's niece had taken the unpleasant aspect which it was
destined to retain. She had put a stop to the lessons, and the reason
she had assigned for this insulting step was that Paula had dictated to
her pupil long sentences out of her Orthodox Greek prayerbook. This, it
was true, she had done; but without the smallest concealment; and the
passages she had chosen had contained nothing but what must elevate the
soul of every Christian, of whatever confession.

The child had wept bitterly over her grandmother's fiat, though Paula
had always taken the lessons quite seriously, for Mary loved her older
companion with all the enthusiasm of a half-grown girl--as a child
of ten really is in Egypt; her passionate little heart worshipped the
beautiful maiden who was in every respect so far above her, and Paula's
arms had opened wide to embrace the child who brought sunshine into the
gloomy, chill atmosphere she breathed in her uncle's house. But
Neforis regarded the child's ardent love for her Melchite relation as
exaggerated and morbid, imperilling perhaps her religious faith; and she
fancied that under Paula's influence Mary had transferred her affections
from her to the younger woman with added warmth. Nor was this idea
wholly fanciful; the child's strong sense of justice could not bear to
see her friend misunderstood and slighted, often simply and entirely
misjudged and hardly blamed, so Mary felt it her duty, as far as in her
lay, to make up for her grandmother's delinquencies in regard to the
guest who in the child's eyes was perfection.

But Neforis was not the woman to put up with this demeanor in a child.
Mary was her granddaughter, the only child of her lost son, and no one
should come between them. So she forbid the little girl to go to Paula's
room without an express message, and when a Greek teacher was engaged
for her, her instructions were that she should keep her pupil as much
as possible out of the Syrian damsel's way. All this only fanned the
child's vehement affection; and tenderly as her grandmother would
sometimes caress her--while Mary on her part never failed in dutiful
obedience--neither of them ever felt a true and steady warmth of heart
towards the other; and for this Paula was no do