“Even in his delirium he did hot once scratch or bite, but only defended himself like a man.—Thank you, now, for your assistance. If you had not flung the cord round his hands, the game might have ended very differently.”
“Surely not!” exclaimed Paula decidedly. “How strong you are, Philip. I feel quite alarmed!”
“You?” said the leech laughing. “On the contrary, you need never be alarmed again now that you have seen by chance that your champion is no weakling.—Pfooh! I shall be glad now of a little rest.” She offered him her handkerchief, and while he thankfully used it to wipe his brow—controlling with much difficulty the impulse to press it to his lips, he added lightly:
“With such an assistant everything must go well. There is no merit in being strong; every one can be strong who comes into the world with healthy blood and well-knit bones, who keeps all his limbs well exercised, as I did in my youth, and who does not destroy his inheritance by dissipated living.—However, I still feel the struggle in my hands; but there is some good wine in the next room yet, and two or three cups of it will do me good.” They went together into the adjoining room where, by this time, most of the lamps were extinguished. Paula poured out the wine, touched the goblet with her lips, and he emptied it at a draught; but he was not to be allowed to drink off a second, for he had scarcely raised it, when they heard voices in the Masdakite’s room, and Neforis came in. The governor’s careful wife had not quitted her husband’s couch—even Rustem’s storming had not induced her to leave her post; but when she was informed by the slaves what had been going on, and that Paula was still up-stairs with the leech, she had come to the strangers’ rooms as soon as her husband could spare her to speak to Philippus, to represent to Paula what the proprieties required, and to find out what the strange noises could be which still seemed to fill the house—at this hour usually as silent as the grave. They proceeded from the sick-rooms, but also from Orion, who had just come in, and from Nilus the treasurer, who had been called by the former into his room, though the night was fast drawing on to morning. To the governor’s wife everything seemed ominous at the close of this terrible day, marked in the calendar as unlucky; so she made her way up-stairs, escorted by her husband’s night watcher, and holding in her hand a small reliquary to which she ascribed the power of banning vile spirits.
She came into the sick-room swiftly and noiselessly, put the nun through a strict cross-examination with the fretful sharpness of a person disturbed in her night’s rest. Then she went into the sitting-room where Philippus was on the point of pledging Paula in his second cup of wine, while she stood before him with dishevelled hair and robe ungirt. All this was an offence against good manners such as she would not suffer in her house, and she stoutly ordered her husband’s niece to go to bed. After all the offences that had been pardoned her this day—no, yesterday—she exclaimed, it would have been more becoming in the girl to examine herself in silence, in her own room, to exorcise the lying spirits which had her in their power, and implore her Saviour for forgiveness, than to pretend to be nursing the sick while she was carrying on, with a young man, an orgy which, as the Sister had just told her, had lasted since mid-day.
Paula spoke not a word, though the color changed in her face more than once as she listened to this speech. But when Neforis finally pointed to the door, she said, with all the cold pride she had at her command when she was the object of unworthy suspicions:
“Your aim is easily seen through. I should scorn to reply, but that you are the wife of the man who, till you set him against me, was glad to call himself my friend and protector, and who is also related to me. As usual, you attribute to me an unworthy motive. In showing me the door of this room consecrated by suffering, you are turning me out of your house, which you and your son—for I must say it for once—have made a hell to me.”
“I! And my—No! this is indeed—” exclaimed the matron in panting rage. She clasped her hands over her heaving bosom and her pale face was dyed crimson, while her eyes flashed wrathful lightnings. “That is too much; a thousand times too much—a thousand times—do you hear?—And I—I condescend to answer you! We picked her up in the street, and have treated her like a daughter, spent enormous sums on her, and now....”
This was addressed to the leech rather than to Paula; but she took up the gauntlet and replied in a tone of unqualified scorn:
“And now I plainly declare, as a woman of full age, free to dispose of myself, that to-morrow morning I leave this house with everything that belongs to me, even if I should go as a beggar;—this house, where I have been grossly insulted, where I and my faithful servant have been falsely condemned, and where he is even now about to be murdered.”