With light steps, Amalaswintha, forbidding the attendance of her women, and only hiding a few jewels and documents in the folds of her mantle, hurried from her room into the wide colonnade which led to the garden.
She feared to meet here as usual some lurking spy, and to be stopped, and perhaps detained. She frequently looked back, and even glanced carefully into the niches of the statues--all was empty and quiet, no spy followed her footsteps. Thus, unobserved, she reached the platform of the terrace which united the palace and the garden, and afforded an open view of the latter.
Amalaswintha examined the nearest path leading to the Temple of Venus. The way was open. Only the faded leaves fell rustling from the tall pines on to the sandy path, where they were whirled about by the wind, which drove the mist and clouds before it in ghostly shapes; it was very dismal in the deserted garden, which looked grey and dim in the twilight.
The Princess shivered. The cold wind tore at her veil and mantle. She cast a shy glance at the heavy, gloomy mass of stone which she had left behind--the building in whose precincts she had ruled so proudly, and from which she was now escaping, lonely and fearfully as a criminal.
She thought of her son, who reposed in the vault of the palace. She thought of her daughter, whom she herself had banished from these walls.
For a moment her pain threatened to overpower the forsaken woman; she tottered, and with difficulty supported herself by the broad balustrade of the steps which she was descending. A feverish shudder shook her frame, as the horror of despair shook her soul.
"But my people," she said to herself, "and my atonement---- I must and will accomplish it."
Strengthened by this thought, she again hurried down the steps, and entered an alley overhung by thick foliage, which led across the garden, and ended at the Temple of Venus.
She walked rapidly forward, trembling whenever the autumn leaves, with a sighing sound, were swept across her path from a side-walk.
Breathless she arrived at the little temple, and looked searchingly around her.