enes which spread before her eyes.

Woeful thoughts and recollections now moved within her in bewildering
confusion. All that she had suffered since Ulpius had dragged her from
the farm-house in the suburbs--the night pilgrimage over the plain--the
fearful passage through the wall--revived in her memory, mingled with
vague ideas, now for the first time aroused, of the plague and famine
that were desolating the city; and, with sudden apprehensions that
Goisvintha might still be following her, knife in hand, through the
lonely streets; while passively prominent over all these varying
sources of anguish and dread, the scene of the young chieftain's death
lay like a cold weight on her heavy heart. The damp turf of his grave
seemed still to press against her breast; his last kiss yet trembled on
her lips; she knew, though she dared not look down on them, that the
spots of his blood yet stained her garments.

Whether she strove to rise and continue her flight; whether she
crouched down again under the portico, resigned for one bitter moment
to perish by the knife of Goisvintha--if Goisvintha were near; to fall
once more into the hands of Ulpius--if Ulpius were tracking her to her
retreat,--the crushing sense that she was utterly bereaved of her
beloved protector--that the friend of her brief days of happiness was
lost to her for ever--that Hermanric, who had preserved her from death,
had been murdered in his youth and his strength by her side, never
deserted her. Since the assassination in the farm-house, she was now
for the first time alone; and now for the first time she felt the full
severity of her affliction, and knew how dark was the blank which was
spread before every aspiration of her future life.

Enduring, almost eternal, as the burden of her desolation seemed now to
have become, it was yet to be removed, ere long, by feelings of a
tenderer mournfulness and a more resigned woe. The innate and innocent
fortitude of disposition, which had made her patient under the rigour
of her youthful education, and hopeful under the trials that assailed
her on her banishment from her father's house; which had never deserted
her until the awful scenes of the past night of assassination and death
rose in triumphant horror before her eyes; and which, even then, had
been suspended but not destroyed--was now destined to regain its
healing influence over her heart. As she still cowered in her lonely
refuge, the final hope, the yea