Читать книгу Fabiola; Or, The Church of the Catacombs онлайн

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Fabiola’s eyes flashed with fury; she felt herself, for the first time in her life, rebuked, humbled by a slave. She grasped the style in her right hand, and made an almost blind thrust at the unflinching handmaid. Syra instinctively put forward her arm to save her person, and received the point, which, aimed upwards from the couch, inflicted a deeper gash than she had ever before suffered. The tears started into her eyes through the smart of the wound, from which the blood gushed in a stream. Fabiola was in a moment ashamed of her cruel, though unintentional, act, and felt still more humbled before her servants.

“Go, go,” she said to Syra, who was stanching the blood with her handkerchief, “go to Euphrosyne, and have the wound dressed. I did not mean to hurt you so grievously. But stay a moment, I must make you some compensation.” Then, after turning over her trinkets on the table, she continued, “Take this ring; and you need not return here again this evening.”

Fabiola’s conscience was quite satisfied; she had made