ere women who would have triumphed in my
admiration, I should not have attempted to deprive you of your
daughter! Remember when you recover her--and you shall recover
her--that from the time when I first decoyed her into listening to my
lute, to the night when your traitorous servant led me to her
bed-chamber, she has been innocent in this ill-considered matter. I
alone have been guilty! She was scarcely awakened when you discovered
her in my arms, and my entry into her chamber, was as little expected
by her, as it was by you. I was bewildered by the fumes of wine and
the astonishment of your sudden appearance, or I should have rescued
her from your anger, ere it was too late! The events which have passed
this morning, confused though they were, have yet convinced me that I
had mistaken you both. I now know that your child was too pure to be
an object fitted for my pursuit; and I believe that in secluding her as
you did, however ill-advised you might appear, you were honest in your
design! Never in my pursuit of pleasure did I commit so fatal an
error, as when I entered the doors of your house!'

In pronouncing these words, Vetranio but gave expression to the
sentiments by which they were really inspired. As we have before
observed, profligate as he was by thoughtlessness of character and
license of social position, he was neither heartless nor criminal by
nature. Fathers had stormed, but his generosity had hitherto
invariably pacified them. Daughters had wept, but had found
consolation on all previous occasions in the splendour of his palace
and the amiability of his disposition. In attempting, therefore, the
abduction of Antonina, though he had prepared for unusual obstacles, he
had expected no worse results of his new conquest, than those that had
followed, as yet, his gallantries that were past. But, when--in the
solitude of his own home, and in the complete possession of his
faculties--he recalled all the circumstances of his attempt, from the
time when he had stolen on the girl's slumbers, to the moment when she
had fled from the house; when he remembered the stern concentrated
anger of Numerian, and the agony and despair of Antonina; when he
thought on the spirit-broken repentance of the deceived father, and the
fatal departure of the injured daughter, he felt as a man who had not
merely committed an indiscretion, but had been guilty of a crime; he
became convinced that he had incurred the fearful resp