od which the suicide-guests had
disdained, and the simple flask of wine which they would have
carelessly quaffed at one draught, were viewed both by parent and child
as the saving and invigorating sustenance of many days. After having
consumed as much as they dared of their precarious supply, the
remainder was carefully husbanded. It was the last sign and promise of
life to which they looked--the humble yet precious store in which alone
they beheld the earnest of their security, for a few days longer, from
the pangs of famine and the separation of death.

And now, with their small provision of food and wine set like a beacon
of safety before their sight, a deep, dream-like serenity--the sleep of
the oppressed and wearied faculties--arose over their minds. Under its
mysterious and tranquilising influence, all impressions of the gloom
and misery in the city, of the fatal evidences around them of the
duration of the siege, faded away before their perceptions as dim
retiring objects, which the eye loses in vacancy.

Gradually, as the day of the first unsuccessful embassy declined, their
thoughts began to flow back gently to the world of bygone events which
had crumbled into oblivion beneath the march of time. Her first
recollections of her earliest childhood revived in Antonina's memory,
and then mingled strangely with tearful remembrances of the last words
and looks of the young warrior who had expired by her side, and with
calm, solemn thoughts that the beloved spirit, emancipated from the
sphere of shadows, might now be hovering near the quiet garden-grave
where her bitterest tears of loneliness and affliction had been shed,
or moving around her--an invisible and blessed presence--as she sat at
her father's feet and mourned their earthly separation!

In the emotions thus awakened, there was nothing of bitterness or
agony--they calmed and purified the heart through which they moved.
She could now speak to the old man, for the first time, of her days of
absence from him, of the brief joys and long sorrows of her hours of
exile, without failing in her melancholy tale. Sometimes her father
listened to her in sorrowful and speechless attention; or spoke, when
she paused, of consolation and hope, as she had heard him speak among
his congregation while he was yet strong in his resolution to sacrifice
all things for the reformation of the Church. Sometimes resigning
himself to the influence of his thoughts, as they glided