owful to rest; then I shall see you! then you will
feel that I am looking on you! You will be calm and consoled, even by
the side of my grave; for you will think, not of the body that is
beneath, but of the spirit that is waiting for you, as I have often
waited for you here when you were away, and I knew that the approach of
the evening would bring you home again!'

'Hush! you will live!--you will live!' repeated Numerian in the same
low, vacant tones. The strength that still upheld him was in those few
simple words; they were the food of a hope that was born in agony and
cradled in despair.

'Oh, if I might live!' said the girl softly, 'if I might live but for a
few days yet, how much I have to live for!' She endeavoured to bend
her head towards her father as she spoke; for the words were beginning
to fall faintly and more faintly from her lips--exhaustion was
mastering her once again. She dwelt for a moment now on the name of
Hermanric, on the grave in the farm-house garden; then reverted again
to her father. The last feeble sounds she uttered were addressed to
him; and their burden was still of consolation and of love.

Soon the old man, as he stooped over her, saw her eyes close
again--those innocent, gentle eyes which even yet preserved their old
expression while the face grew wan and pale around them--and darkness
and night sank down over his soul while he looked. 'She sleeps,' he
murmured in a voice of awe, as he resumed his watching position by the
side of the couch. 'They call death a sleep; but on her face there is
no death!'

The night grew on. The women who were in attendance entered the room
about midnight, wondering that their assistance had not yet been
required. They beheld the solemn, unruffled composure on the girl's
wasted face; the rapt attention of Numerian, as he ever preserved the
same attitude by her side; and went out again softly without uttering a
word, even in a whisper. There was something dread and impressive in
the very appearance of this room, where Death, that destroys, was in
mortal conflict with Youth and Beauty, that adorn, while the eyes of
one old man watched in loneliness the awful progress of the strife.

Morning came, and still there was no change. Once, when the lamp that
lit the room was fading out as the dawn appeared, Numerian had risen
and looked close on his daughter's face--he thought at that moment that
her features moved; but he saw that the flickering of