ce was indeed restored; and his head drooped forward, and he
trembled and wept upon her bosom, in the overpowering fulness of his
gratitude and delight.

For some moments Antonina, calming with the resolute heroism of
affection her own thronging emotions of awe and affright, endeavoured
to soothe and support her fast-failing parent. Her horror almost
overwhelmed her, as she thought that now, when, through grief and
peril, she was at last restored to him, he might expire in her arms;
but even yet her resolution did not fail her. The last hope of her
brief and bitter life was now the hope of reviving her father, and she
clung to it with the tenacity of despair.

She calmed her voice while she spoke to him; she entreated him to
remember that his daughter had returned to watch over him, to be his
obedient pupil as in days of old. Vain effort! Even while the words
passed her lips, his arms, which had been pressed over her, relaxed;
his head grew heavier on her bosom. In the despair of the moment, she
tore herself from him, and looked round to seek the help that none were
near to afford. The cup of water, the last provision of food,
attracted her eye. With quick instinct she caught them up. Hope,
success, salvation, lay in those miserable relics. She pressed the
food into his mouth; she moistened his parched lips, his dry brow, with
the water. During one moment of horrible suspense she saw him still
insensible; then the vital functions revived; his eyes opened again and
fixed famine-struck on the wretched nourishment before him. He
devoured it ravenously; he drained the cup of water to its last drop;
he sank back again on the couch. But now the torpid blood moved once
more in his veins; his heart beat less and less feebly: he was saved.
She saw it as she bent over him--saved by the lost child in the hour of
her return! It was a sensation of ecstatic triumph and gratitude which
no woeful remembrances had power to embitter in its bright, sudden
birth. She knelt down by the side of the couch, almost crushed by her
own emotions. Over the grave of the young warrior she had raised her
heart to Heaven in agony and grief, and now by her father's side she
poured forth her whole soul to her Creator in trembling ejaculations of
thankfulness and hope.

Thus--the one slowly recovering whatever of life and vigour yet
continued in his weakened frame, the other still filled with her
all-absorbing emotions of gratitude--the f