nder them alike. Fully, freely, bitterly she wept, on the
kindly and parent earth--the patient, friendly ground that once bore
the light footsteps of the first of a race not created for death; that
now holds in its sheltering arms the loved ones, whom, in mourning, we
lay there to sleep; that shall yet be bound to the farthermost of its
depths, when the sun-bright presence of returning spirits shines over
its renovated frame, and love is resumed in angel perfection at the
point where death suspended it in mortal frailness!

'Come home--your father is awaiting you--come home!' repeated the Pagan
vacantly, moving slowly away as he spoke.

At the sound of his voice she started up, and clasping his arm with her
trembling fingers, to arrest his progress, looked affrightedly into his
seared and listless countenance. As she thus gazed on him she appeared
for the first time to recognise him. Fear and astonishment mingled in
her expression with grief and despair as she sunk at his feet, moaning
in tones of piercing entreaty--

'O Ulpius!--if Ulpius you are--have pity on me and take me to my
father! My father! my father! In all the lonely world there is nothing
left to me but my father!'

'Why do you weep to me about your broken lute?' answered Ulpius, with a
dull, unmeaning smile; 'it was not I that destroyed it!'

'They have slain him!' she shrieked distractedly, heedless of the
Pagan's reply. 'I saw them draw their swords on him! See, his blood
is on me--me!--Antonina, whom he protected and loved! Look there; that
is a grave--his grave--I know it! I have never seen him since; he is
down--down there! under the flowers I grew to gather for him! They
slew him; and when I knew it not, they have buried him!--or you--you
have buried him! You have hidden him under the cold garden earth! He
is gone!--Ah, gone, gone--for ever gone!'

And she flung herself again with reckless violence on the grave. After
looking steadfastly on her for a moment, Ulpius approached and raised
her from the earth.

'Come!' he cried angrily, 'the night grows on--your father waits!'

'The walls of Rome shut me from my father! I shall never see my father
nor Hermanric again!' she cried, in tones of bitter anguish,
remembering more perfectly all the miseries of her position, and
struggling to release herself from the Pagan's grasp.

The walls of Rome! At those words the mind of Ulpius opened to a flow
of dark remembrances, and lost the