flickering shadow on his face, and waved in mournful melody over
him--I saw all these things and said, "Aye, this is his grave!" And
then I wept aloud, and raised my eyes to heaven to entreat for a
respite to my despair and an alleviation for his unnatural
suffering--the tears that gushed in a warm & healing stream from my
eyes relieved the burthen that oppressed my heart almost to madness. I
wept for a long time untill I saw him about to revive, when horror and
misery again recurred, and the tide of my sensations rolled back to
their former channel: with a terror I could not restrain--I sprung up
and fled, with winged speed, along the paths of the wood and across
the fields untill nearly dead I reached our house and just ordering
the servants to seek my father at the spot I indicated, I shut myself
up in my own room[.][33]

CHAPTER VI

My chamber was in a retired part of the house, and looked upon the
garden so that no sound of the other inhabitants could reach it; and
here in perfect solitude I wept for several hours. When a servant came
to ask me if I would take food I learnt from him that my father had
returned, and was apparently well and this relieved me from a load of
anxiety, yet I did not cease to weep bitterly. As [_At_] first, as the
memory of former happiness contrasted to my present despair came
across me, I gave relief to the oppression of heart that I felt by
words, and groans, and heart rending sighs: but nature became wearied,
and this more violent grief gave place to a passionate but mute flood
of tears: my whole soul seemed to dissolve [in] them. I did not wring
my hands, or tear my hair, or utter wild exclamations, but as Boccacio
describes the intense and quiet grief [of] Sigismunda over the heart
of Guiscardo,[34] I sat with my hands folded, silently letting fall a
perpetual stream from my eyes. Such was the depth of my emotion that I
had no feeling of what caused my distress, my thoughts even wandered
to many indifferent objects; but still neither moving limb or feature
my tears fell untill, as if the fountains were exhausted, they
gradually subsided, and I awoke to life as from a dream.

When I had ceased to weep reason and memory returned upon me, and I
began to reflect with greater calmness on what had happened, and how
it became me to act--A few hours only had passed but a mighty
revolution had taken place with regard to me--the natural work of
years had been transacted since the m