"Not only possible, but positive, sweetheart," replied the old man, putting out his hand to take hers, but she shrank back, exclaiming vehemently:
"I will not be your sweetheart, if you speak so of her! A man as old as you are ought to be just. You do not know her at all, and what you say about her heart. . ."
"Gently, gently, child," the widow put in; and Horapollo answered with peculiar emphasis.
"That heart, my little whirlwind!—it would be well for us all if we could forget it, forget it for good or for evil. She has been tried to-day, and that heart is sentenced to cease beating."
"Sentenced! Merciful Heaven!" shrieked Pulcheria, and as she started up her mother cried out:
"For God's sake do not jest about such things, it is a sin.—Is it true? —Is it possible? Those wretches, those… I see in your face it is true; they have condemned Paula."
"As you say," replied Horapollo calmly. "The girl is to be executed."
"And you only tell us now?" wept Pulcheria, while Mary broke out:
"And yet you have been able to jest and laugh, and you—I hate you! And if you were not such a helpless, old, old man. . ." But here Joanna again silenced the child, and she asked between her sobs:
"Executed?—Will they cut off her head? And is there no mercy for her who was as far away from that luckless fight as we were—for her, a girl, and the daughter of Thomas?"