forgotten myself. But how can I help being so little? You know very
well when any one laughs at me for it......"

"You get angry and slap!" retorted the child, walking on. "Yesterday,
perhaps, I might have laughed over a box on the ear--it is not the first
--or have given it to you back again; but to-day!--Just now," and she
shuddered involuntarily, "just now I felt as if some black slave had laid
his dirty hand on my cheek. You are not what you were. You walk quite
differently, and you look--depend upon it you do not look as nice and as
bright as you used, and I know why: You did a very bad thing last
evening."

"But dear pet," said the other, "you must not be so hard. Perhaps I did
not really tell the judges everything I knew, but Orion, who loves me so,
and whose wife I am to be. . . ."

"He led you into sin!--Yes; and he was always merry and kind till
yesterday; but since--Oh, that unlucky day!"

Here she was interrupted by Eudoxia, who poured out a flood of
reproaches and finally desired her to resume her task. The child obeyed
unresistingly; but she had scarcely settled to her wax tablets again when
Katharina was by her side, whispering to her that Orion would certainly
not have asserted anything that he did not believe to be true, and that
she had really been in doubt as to whether a gem with a gold back, or a
mere gold frame-work, had been hanging to Paula's chain. At this Mary
turned sharply and quickly upon her, looked her straight in the eyes and
exclaimed--but in Egyptian that the governess might not understand, for
she had disdained to learn a single word of it: