ard, and in
that moment Antonina had seen her.

Numerian, moving slowly with his daughter through the crowd, felt her
hand tighten round his, and saw her features stiffen into sudden
rigidity; but the change was only for an instant. Ere he could speak,
she caught him by the arm, and drew him forward with convulsive energy.
Then, in accents hardly articulate, low, breathless, unlike her wonted
voice, he heard her exclaim, as she struggled on with him, 'She is
there--there behind us! to kill me, as she killed him! Home! home!'

Exhausted already, through long weakness and natural infirmity, by the
rough contact of the crowd, bewildered by Antonina's looks and actions,
and by the startling intimation of unknown peril, conveyed to him in
her broken exclamations of affright, Numerian's first impulse, as he
hurried onward by her side, led him to entreat protection and help from
the surrounding populace. But even could he have pointed out to them
the object of his dread amid that motley throng of all nations, the
appeal he now made would have remained unanswered.

Of all the results of the frightful severity of privation suffered by
the besieged, none were more common than those mental aberrations which
produced visions of danger, enemies, and death, so palpable as to make
the persons beholding them implore assistance against the hideous
creation of their own delirium. Accordingly, most of those to whom the
entreaties of Numerian were addressed passed without noticing them.
Some few carelessly bid him remember that there were no enemies now;
that the days of peace were approaching; and that a meal of good food,
which he might soon expect to enjoy, was the only help for a famished
man. No one, in that period of horror and suffering, which was now
drawing to a close, saw anything extraordinary in the confusion of the
father and the terror of the child. So they pursued their feeble
flight unprotected, and the footsteps of Goisvintha followed them as
they went.

They had already commenced the ascent of the Pincian Hill, when
Antonina stopped abruptly, and turned to look behind her. Many people
yet thronged the street below; but her eyes penetrated among them,
sharpened by peril, and instantly discerned the ample robe and the tall
form, still at the same distance from them, and pausing as they had
paused. For one moment, the girl's eyes fixed in the wild, helpless
stare of terror on her father's face; but the next, tha