The tears
stood in her eyes, but she neither sighed nor spoke. Her frame trembled
all over with the excess of her astonishment and delight, as she still
steadfastly looked on him and still listened intently as he proceeded:--
'Fear, then, no longer for your safety--Goisvintha, whom you dread, is
far from us; she knows not that we are here; she cannot track our
footsteps now, to threaten or to harm you! Remember no more how you
have suffered and I have sinned! Think only how bitterly I have
repented our morning's separation, and how gladly I welcome our meeting
of to-night! Oh, Antonina! you are beautiful with a wondrous
loveliness, you are young with a perfected and unchildlike youth, your
words fall upon my ear with the music of a song of the olden time; it is
like a dream of the spirits that my fathers worshipped, when I look up
and behold you at my side!'
An expression of mingled confusion, pleasure, and surprise, flushed the
girl's half-averted countenance as she listened to the Goth. She rose
with a smile of ineffable gratitude and delight, and pointed to the
prospect beyond, as she softly rejoined:--
'Let us go a little further onward, where the moonlight shines over the
meadow below.
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