Life seemed to expand within him under their fresh and gentle
ministering. Once more he raised himself, and turned towards his child;
and now his heart throbbed with a healthful joy, and his arms closed
round her, not in the helplessness of infirmity, but in the welcome of
love.
His words, when he spoke to her, fell at first almost inarticulately
from his lips--they were mingled together in confused phrases of
tenderness, contrition, thanksgiving. All the native enthusiasm of his
disposition, all the latent love for his child, which had for years been
suppressed by his austerity, or diverted by his ambition, now at last
burst forth.
Trembling and silent in his arms, Antonina vainly endeavoured to return
his caresses and to answer his words of welcome. Now for the first time
she knew how deep was her father's affection for her; she felt how
foreign to his real nature had been his assumed severity in their
intercourse of former days; and in the quick flow of new feelings and
old recollections produced by the delighting surprise of the discovery,
she found herself speechless.
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