xistence of tender
cares, an eternity of youthful devotion spoke in that rapt, momentary,
eloquent gaze, and imprinted on his expression a character ineffably
beautiful and calm--a nobleness above the human, and approaching the
angelic and divine.

Intuitively Goisvintha followed the direction of his eyes, and looked,
like him, on the Roman girl's face. A lowering expression of hatred
replaced the scorn that had hitherto distorted her passionate features.
Mechanically her hand again half raised the knife, and the accents of
her wrathful voice once more disturbed the sacred silence of affection
and grief.

'Is it for the girl there that you would still live?' she cried
sternly. 'I foreboded it, coward, when I first looked on you! I
prepared for it when I wounded you! I made sure that when my anger
again threatened this new ruler of your thoughts and mover of your
actions, you should have lost the power to divert it from her again!
Think you that, because my disdain has delayed it, my vengeance on her
is abandoned? Long since I swore to you that she should die, and I will
hold to my purpose! I have punished you; I will slay her! Can you
shield her from the blow to-night, as you shielded her in your tent?
You are weaker before me than a child!'

She ceased abruptly, for at this moment a noise of hurrying footsteps
and contending voices became suddenly audible from without. As she
heard it, a ghastly paleness chased the flush of anger from her cheeks.
With the promptitude of apprehension she snatched the sword of
Hermanric from under Antonina, and ran it through the staples intended
to hold the rude bar of the door. The next instant the footsteps
sounded on the garden path, and the next the door was assailed.

The good sword held firm, but the frail barrier that it sustained
yielded at the second shock and fell inwards, shattered, to the floor.
Instantly the gap was darkened by human forms, and the firelight glowed
over the repulsive countenances of two Huns who headed the intruders,
habited in complete armour and furnished with naked swords.

'Yield yourself prisoner by Alaric's command,' cried one of the
barbarians, 'or you shall be slain as a deserter where you now stand!'

The Goth had risen to his feet as the door was burst in. The arrival
of his pursuers seemed to restore his lost energies, to deliver him at
once from an all-powerful thraldom. An expression of triumph and
defiance shone over his steady