itary place for the death that is in store for me! I
have suffered all the loneliness of my hours of expectation, without
complaint; I have listened with little dread, and no grief, for the
approach of my enemy who has sworn that she will shed my blood! Having
none to love me, and being a stranger in the land of my own nation, I
have nothing to live for! But it is a bitter misery to me to behold in
you the fulfiller of my doom; to be snatched by the hand of Hermanric
from the heritage of life that I have so long struggled to preserve!'

Her voice had altered, as she pronounced these words, to an impressive
lowness and mournfulness of tone. Its quiet, saddened accents were
expressive of an almost divine resignation and sorrow; they seemed to
be attuned to a mysterious and untraceable harmony with the melancholy
stillness of the night-landscape. As she now stood looking up with
pale, calm countenance, and gentle, tearless eyes, into the sky whose
moonlight brightness shone softly over her form, the Virgin watching
the approach of her angel messenger could hardly have been adorned with
a more pure and simple loveliness, than now dwelt over the features of
Numerian's forsaken child.

No longer master of his agitation; filled with awe, grief, and despair,
as he looked on the victim of his heartless impatience; Hermanric bowed
himself at the girl's feet, and, in the passionate utterance of real
remorse, offered up his supplications for pardon and his assurances of
protection and love. All that the reader has already learned--the
bitter self-upbraidings of his evening, the sorrowful wanderings of his
night, the mysterious attraction that led him to the solitary house,
his joy at once more discovering his lost charge--all these confessions
he now poured forth in the simple yet powerful eloquence of strong
emotion and true regret.

Gradually and amazedly, as she listened to his words, Antonina awoke
from her abstraction. Even the expression of his countenance and the
earnestness of his manner, viewed by the intuitive penetration of her
sex, wrought with kind and healing influence on her mind. She started
suddenly, a bright flush flew over her colourless cheeks; she bent
down, and looked earnestly and wistfully into the Goth's face. Her
lips moved, but her quick convulsive breathing stifled the words that
she vainly endeavoured to form.

'Yes,' continued Hermanric, rising and drawing her towards him again,
'you shall