His eyes lost their vacant expression; he raised
himself suddenly on the couch; he saw that what had begun as a vision
had ended as a reality; that his dream had proved the immediate fore-
runner of its own fulfilment; that his daughter in her bodily presence
was indeed restored; and his head drooped forward, and he trembled and
wept upon her bosom, in the overpowering fulness of his gratitude and
delight.
For some moments Antonina, calming with the resolute heroism of
affection her own thronging emotions of awe and affright, endeavoured to
soothe and support her fast-failing parent. Her horror almost
overwhelmed her, as she thought that now, when, through grief and peril,
she was at last restored to him, he might expire in her arms; but even
yet her resolution did not fail her. The last hope of her brief and
bitter life was now the hope of reviving her father, and she clung to it
with the tenacity of despair.
She calmed her voice while she spoke to him; she entreated him to
remember that his daughter had returned to watch over him, to be his
obedient pupil as in days of old.
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