Gradually, as the day of the first unsuccessful embassy declined, their
thoughts began to flow back gently to the world of bygone events which
had crumbled into oblivion beneath the march of time. Her first
recollections of her earliest childhood revived in Antonina's memory,
and then mingled strangely with tearful remembrances of the last words
and looks of the young warrior who had expired by her side, and with
calm, solemn thoughts that the beloved spirit, emancipated from the
sphere of shadows, might now be hovering near the quiet garden-grave
where her bitterest tears of loneliness and affliction had been shed, or
moving around her--an invisible and blessed presence--as she sat at her
father's feet and mourned their earthly separation!
In the emotions thus awakened, there was nothing of bitterness or
agony--they calmed and purified the heart through which they moved. She
could now speak to the old man, for the first time, of her days of
absence from him, of the brief joys and long sorrows of her hours of
exile, without failing in her melancholy tale.
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