At length she pauses in her course when it brings her nearest to the
wicket, advances a few steps towards it, then recedes, and recommences
her monotonous progress, and then again breaking off on her round,
finally succeeds in withdrawing herself from the confines of the grave,
passes through the gate, and following the path to the high-road, slowly
proceeds towards the eastern limits of the Gothic camp. The fixed,
ghastly, unfeminine expression on her features marks her as the same
woman whom we last beheld as the assassin at the farm-house, but beyond
this she is hardly recognisable again. Her formerly powerful and
upright frame is bent and lean; her hair waves in wild, white locks
about her shrivelled face; all the rude majesty of her form has
departed; there is nothing to show that it is still Goisvintha haunting
the scene of her crime but the savage expression debasing her
countenance and betraying the evil heart within, unsubdued as ever in
its yearning for destruction and revenge.
Since the period when we last beheld her, removed in the custody of the
Huns from the dead body of her kinsman, the farm-house had been the
constant scene of her pilgrimage from the camp, the chosen refuge where
she brooded in solitude over her fierce desires.
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