"What is your name?" he asked--"what is your name, young lord! I am not going to admit you and all these barbarians to the Lady Flavia, who rarely sees any one. Then that wild youth Ammian has gone forth, and there is no one but the lady and her daughter within."
Beyond the great gates stood the house, with its long colonnade; but planted in the space between were some bushes and low apple-trees, which prevented Theodore from seeing anything but the two steps which raised the portico from the ground, and the lower part of the pillars which composed it. As he looked on, however, he saw a female figure pass along the colonnade; and, though he could not see the face, yet the sight of the small graceful foot that moved the full and floating robe was enough to make his heart beat high.
"I am Theodore, Ancinus," he said. "Let me pass, my good friend. These strangers can wait for me without. I am Theodore, son of Paulinus; I say let me pass."
There was a cry of joy from within; for the tones of that voice had caught the ear of Ildica, and she had paused to listen--there was a cry of joy, a few steps, quick as those of the fawn bounding after its mother over the morning dew, and Ildica was in her lover's arms.
"At length! at length!" she exclaimed, as, twined in his arms and pressed to his heart, she raised those large dark lustrous eyes to his face, swimming with tears sweeter than the happiest smile that ever shone upon the human countenance. "At length, at length, my Theodore, thou art come! Come after two long years and a half. Oh how weary has felt my heart under the passing of that tedious time; and how busy has fancy been with all the dangers and with all the horrors in the storehouses, the wide, dark storehouses of possibility! How I have tortured myself to think why my Theodore did not write; but thou art come, and the clouds are all dispelled."
"Beloved, I did write," replied Theodore. "Twice have I written; but it was under such circumstances that I could hardly hope thou wouldst ever see the characters my hand had traced. Nor have I heard from thee, my Ildica; but I fancied no neglect, no forgetfulness, no change of affection."
"I too wrote, beloved," she answered; "but I wrote only once, because no other occasion presented itself of sending letters to the country of the Huns. Forgetfulness! neglect! change of affection! Oh, Theodore! could anything in life change that which I feel sure death itself can never alter? What have I thought of but thee since last we met? But let us to my mother; let her share our joy."
"That joy will be greater, my beloved, when you hear all," replied the youth; and, still circling her fair form with his arm, while her hand remained clasped in his, he accompanied her back into the house where Flavia sat, unknowing his arrival.
"Joy, dearest mother, joy!" cried Ildica: "here is our Theodore returned."
"Ay, and returned," added Theodore, "never to quit you again! Attila--though I saw that it gave him no slight pain--has freed me from the rest of the term which I had bound myself by promise to remain with him. He has but exacted that I shall never bear arms against his people, nor provoke them to strife with me; for he has a superstition that the first injury inflicted by any of them upon me will be followed by his ruin or his death."