mand. But, though
thus persuaded of the separation of Antonina and the Goth, her
ignorance of the girl's fate rankled unintermittingly in her savage
heart. Doubtful whether she had permanently reclaimed Hermanric to the
interests of vengeance and bloodshed; vaguely suspecting that he might
have informed himself in her absence of Antonina's place of refuge or
direction of flight; still resolutely bent on securing the death of her
victim, wherever she might have strayed, she awaited with trembling
eagerness that day of restoration to available activity and strength
which would enable her to resume her influence over the Goth, and her
machinations against the safety of the fugitive girl. The time of her
final and long-expected recovery, was the very day preceding the stormy
night we have already described, and her first employment of her
renewed energy was to send word to the young Goth of her intention of
seeking him at his encampment ere the evening closed.

It was this intimation which caused the inquietude mentioned as
characteristic of the manner of Hermanric at the commencement of the
preceding chapter. The evening there described was the first that saw
him deprived, through the threatened visit of Goisvintha, of the
anticipation of repairing to Antonina, as had been his wont, under
cover of the night; for to slight his kinswoman's ominous message was
to risk the most fatal of discoveries. Trusting to the delusive
security of her sickness, he had hitherto banished the unwelcome
remembrance of her existence from his thoughts. But, now that she was
once more capable of exertion and of crime, he felt that if he would
preserve the secret of Antonina's hiding-place and the security of
Antonina's life, he must remain to oppose force to force and stratagem
to stratagem, when Goisvintha sought him at his post, even at the risk
of inflicting, by his absence from the farm-house, all the pangs of
anxiety and apprehension on the lonely girl.

Absorbed in such reflections as these, longing to depart, yet
determined to remain, he impatiently awaited Goisvintha's approach,
until the rising of the storm with its mysterious and all-engrossing
train of events forced his thoughts and actions into a new channel.
When, however, his interviews with the stranger and the Gothic king
were past, and he had returned as he had been bidden to his appointed
sojourn in the camp, his old anxieties, displaced but not destroyed,
resumed their i