as they sat by it. Sometimes when the mirth grew louder at the
rustic festival, it reached them in faint, subdued notes; sometimes
they heard the voices of the labourers in the neighbouring fields
talking to each other at their work; but, besides these, no other
sounds were loud enough to be distinguished. There was still an
expression of the melancholy and feebleness that grief and suffering
leave behind them on the countenances of the father and daughter; but
resignation and peace appeared there as well--resignation that was
perfected by the hard teaching of woe, and peace that was purer for
being imparted from the one to the other, like the strong and deathless
love from which it grew.

There was something now in the look and attitude of the girl, as she
sat thinking of the young warrior who had died in her defence and for
her love, and training the shrubs to grow closer round the grave,
which, changed though she was, recalled in a different form the old
poetry and tranquillity of her existence when we first saw her singing
to the music of her lute in the garden on the Pincian Hill. No thoughts
of horror and despair were suggested to her as she now looked on the
farm-house scene. Hers was not the grief which shrinks selfishly from
all that revives the remembrance of the dead: to her, their influence
over the memory was a grateful and a guardian influence that gave a
better purpose to the holiest life, and a nobler nature to the purest
thoughts.

Thus they were sitting by the grave, sad yet content; footsore already
on the pilgrimage of life, yet patient to journey farther if they
might--when an unusual tumult, a noise of rolling wheels, mingled with
a confused sound of voices, was heard in the lane behind them. They
looked round, and saw that Vetranio was approaching them alone through
the wicket-gate.

He came forward slowly; the stealthy poison instilled by the Banquet of
Famine palpably displayed its presence within him as the clear sunlight
fell on his pale, wasted face. He smiled kindly as he addressed
Antonina; but the bodily pain and mental agitation which that smile was
intended to conceal, betrayed themselves in his troubled voice as he
spoke.

'This is our last meeting for years--it may be our last meeting for
life,' he said; 'I linger at the outset of my journey, but to behold
you as guardian of the one spot of ground that is most precious to you
on earth--as mistress, indeed, of the little that