And now when, after peril and anguish, she once more stood within the
city of her home, what hope remained to Antonina of obtaining her last
refuge under her father's roof, and deriving her solitary consolation
from the effort to regain her father's love? With the termination of
his passage through the breach in the wall had ended ever recollection
associated with it in the Pagan's shattered memory. A new blank now
pervaded his lost faculties, desolate as that which had overwhelmed them
in the night when he first stood in the farm-house garden by the young
chieftain's grave. He moved onward, unobservant, unthinking, without
aim or hope, driven by a mysterious restlessness, forgetting the very
presence of Antonina as she followed him, but still mechanically
grasping her hand, and dragging her after him he knew not whither.
And she, on her part, made no effort more for deliverance. She had seen
the sentinel unmoved by her entreaties, she had seen the walls of her
father's house receding from her longing eyes, as Ulpius pitilessly
hurried her father and farther from its distant door; and she lost the
last faint hope of restoration, the last lingering desire of life, as
the sense of her helplessness now weighed heaviest on her mind.
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