erent from that which it had displayed on the
occasion when they had last occupied it. The formerly bare walls were
now covered with rich, thick hangings; and the simple couch and scanty
table of other days had been exchanged for whatever was most luxurious
and complete in the household furniture of the age. At one end of the
room three women, attended by a little girl, were engaged in preparing
some dishes of fruit and vegetables; at the other, two men were
occupied in low, earnest conversation, occasionally looking round
anxiously to a couch placed against the third side of the apartment, on
which Antonina lay extended, while Numerian watched by her in silence.
The point of Goisvintha's knife had struck deep, but, as yet, the fatal
purpose of the assassination had failed.

The girl's eyes were closed; her lips were parted in the languor of
suffering; one of her hands lay listless on her father's knee. A
slight expression of pain, melancholy in its very slightness, appeared
on her pale face, and occasionally a long-drawn, quivering breath
escaped her--nature's last touching utterance of its own feebleness!
The old man, as he sat by her side, fixed on her a wistful, inquiring
glance. Sometimes he raised his hand, and gently and mechanically
moved to and fro the long locks of her hair, as they spread over the
head of the couch; but he never turned to communicate with the other
persons in the room--he sat as if he saw nothing save his daughter's
figure stretched before him, and heard nothing save the faint,
fluttering sound of her breathing, close at his ear.

It was now dark, and one lamp hanging from the ceiling threw a soft
equal light over the room. The different persons occupying it
presented but little evidence of health and strength in their
countenances, to contrast them in appearance with the wounded girl; all
had undergone the wasting visitation of the famine, and all were pale
and languid, like her. A strange, indescribable harmony prevailed over
the scene. Even the calmness of absorbing expectation and trembling
hope, expressed in the demeanour of Numerian, seemed reflected in the
actions of those around him, in the quietness with which the women
pursued their employment, in the lower and lower whispers in which the
men continued their conversation. There was something pervading the
air of the whole apartment that conveyed a sense of the solemn,
unworldly stillness which we attach to the abstract idea