Hermanric's downcast
eyes and melancholy, unchanging expressions betrayed the gloomy
abstraction in which he was absorbed. With one hand clasped in his, and
the other resting with her head on his shoulder, Antonina listened
attentively to the alternate rising and falling of the wind. Her beauty
had grown fresher and more woman-like during her sojourn at the farm-
house. Cheerfulness and hope seemed to have gained at length all the
share in her being assigned to them by nature at her birth. Even at
this moment of tempest and darkness there was more of wonder and awe
than of agitation and affright in her expression, as she sat hearkening,
with flushed cheek and brightened eye, to the progress of the nocturnal
storm.
Thus engrossed by their thoughts, Hermanric and Antonina remained silent
in their little retreat, until the reveries of both were suddenly
interrupted by the snapping asunder of the bar of wood which secured the
door of the room, the stress of which, as it bent under the repeated
shocks of the wind, the rotten spar was too weak to sustain any longer.
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