steps through pleasant shades took her to the convent where she could
every day attend divine service among pious companions of her own creed,
as she had done in her childhood. She had longed intensely for such food
for the spirit, and the abbess--who was the widow of a distinguished
patrician of Constantinople and had known Paula's parents--could supply
it in abundance. How gladly she talked to the girl of the goodness and
the beauty of those to whom she owed her being and whom she had so early
lost! She could pour out to this motherly soul all that weighed on her
own, and was received by her as a beloved daughter of her old age.

And her hosts--what kind-hearted though singular folks! nay, in their
way, remarkable. She had never dreamed that there could be on earth any
beings at once so odd and so lovable.

First there was old Rufinus, the head of the house, a vigorous, hale old
man, who, with his long silky, snow-white hair and beard, looked
something like the aged St. John and something like a warrior grown grey
in service. What an amiable spirit of childlike meekness he had, in
spite of the rough ways he sometimes fell into. Though inclined to be
contradictory in his intercourse with his fellow-men, he was merry and
jocose when his views were opposed to theirs. She had never met a more
contented soul or a franker disposition, and she could well understand
how much it must fret and gall such a man to live on,--day after day,
appearing, in one respect at any rate, different from what he really was.
For he, too, belonged to her confession; but, though he sent his wife and
daughter to worship in the convent chapel, he himself was compelled to
profess himself a Coptic Christian, and submit to the necessity of
attending a Jacobite church with all his family on certain holy days,
averse as he was to its unattractive form of worship.