face,
she might have been mistaken, as she lay in the woman's arms, for an
exquisitely chiseled statue of youth in death!

When the figure of the young warrior, arrayed in his martial
habiliments, and standing near the insensible girl with evident
emotions of wonder and anxiety, was added to the group thus
produced,--when Goisvintha's tall, powerful frame, clothed in dark
garments, and bent over the fragile form and white dress of the
fugitive, was illuminated by the wild, fitful glare of the torch,--when
the heightened colour, worn features, and eager expression of the woman
were beheld, here shadowed, there brightened, in close opposition to
the pale, youthful, reposing countenance of the girl, such an
assemblage of violent lights and deep shades was produced, as gave the
whole scene a character at once mysterious and sublime. It presented
an harmonious variety of solemn colours, united by the exquisite
artifice of Nature to a grand, yet simple disposition of form. It was
a picture executed by the hand of Rembrandt, and imagined by the mind
of Raphael.

Starting abruptly from her long, earnest examination of the fugitive,
Goisvintha proceeded to employ herself in restoring animation to her
insensible charge. While thus occupied, she preserved unbroken
silence. A breathless expectation, that absorbed all her senses in one
direction, seemed to have possessed itself of her heart. She laboured
at her task with the mechanical, unwavering energy of those, whose
attention is occupied by their thoughts rather than their actions.
Slowly and unwillingly the first faint flush of returning animation
dawned, in the tenderest delicacy of hue, upon the girl's colourless
cheek. Gradually and softly, her quickening respiration fluttered a
thin lock of hair that had fallen over her face. A little interval
more, and then the closed, peaceful eyes suddenly opened, and glance
quickly round the tent with a wild expression of bewilderment and
terror. Then, as Goisvintha rose, and attempted to place her on a
seat, she tore herself from her grasp, looked on her for a moment with
fearful intentness, and then falling on her knees, murmured, in a
plaintive voice,--

'Have mercy upon me. I am forsaken by my father,--I know not why. The
gates of the city are shut against me. My habitation in Rome is closed
to me for ever!'

She had scarcely spoken these few words, before an ominous change
appeared in Goisvintha's countenance. It