Deep as was the prostration under which he had now fallen, it was yet
less painful to Antonina to behold it than to listen to the incoherent
revelations which had fallen from his lips but the moment before, and
which, in her astonishment and affright, she had dreaded might be the
awful indications of the overthrow of her father's reason. As she again
placed herself by his side, she trembled to feel that her own weariness
was fast overpowering her; but she still struggled with her rising
despair--still strove to think only of capacity for endurance and
chances of relief.
The silence in the room was deep and dismal while they now sat together.
The faint breezes, at long intervals, drowsily rose and fell as they
floated through the open window; the fitful sunbeams alternately
appeared and vanished as the clouds rolled upward in airy succession
over the face of heaven. Time moved sternly in its destined progress,
and Nature varied tranquilly through its appointed limits of change, and
still no hopes, no saving projects, nothing but dark recollections and
woeful anticipations occupied Antonina's mind; when, just as her weary
head was drooping towards the ground, just as sensation and fortitude
and grief itself seemed declining into a dreamless and deadly sleep, a
last thought, void of discernible connection or cause, rose suddenly
within her--animating, awakening, inspiring.
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