At length, towards her usual hour of retiring to rest, Flavia took out of a casket a golden bracelet of an antique form, and, laying it on her knee, gazed upon it thoughtfully. It had been the first present that she had received from her dead husband, and in all her wanderings, under every blast of adversity, that bracelet still had remained with her. She had worn it on the shores of Dalmatia; it had been carried forth amid the rocking of the earthquake; it had been restored, with other property, at the command of Attila, after having been taken by the Huns; she had possessed it among the Alani; she had carried it with her to Rome; she had brought it thence to where she sat even then. Every night, through a long life, she had gazed upon that token of early affection; and now, with her thoughts turning to her husband, she looked upon it again, thinking, "I go to join him, where we shall never be separated more!"
As she thus thought, she tried to clasp it on her arm: but suddenly it slipped from her fingers, rolled from her knee, and dropped upon the ground. With a quick motion, she stooped forward to catch it ere it fell or pick it up; then suddenly pressed her hand upon her breast, and sunk back upon the cushions that supported her, exclaiming, "My child! my Ildica!"
Ildica darted forward, and caught the hands that her mother now extended towards her. The lips of Flavia still moved, but no sound followed; she fixed her eyes with a look of deep love upon her child; the brightness of being was still there; the flame of life's lamp shone in them still brightly; but, in a moment after, it waxed dim and faint: light and life, lustre and meaning, passed away; the jaw fell; the features became rigid; and the gray hue of vacant death spread over the soulless countenance. A loud long shriek rang through those apartments; and when the slaves rushed in, they found their mistress dead, where she sat, and her daughter lying senseless at her feet.
[CHAPTER XV.]
THE ANTICIPATIONS OF EVIL.
Long and dark was the sleep that fell upon Ildica: the overwrought mind, the overexcited feelings, the heart and brain, stretched beyond their bearing to support each other, had worked in the mortal frame that complete overthrow of the equipoise which such a state almost invariably will produce. The sleep of Ildica's mind--for the reasoning soul remained asleep long after the eyes had opened again to the light of day after her mother's death--was not the sleep which brings repose; and when at length she really woke, and gazed about her with full returning consciousness, she found an unknown scene around her.
She was stretched upon a rich couch, round which fell the hangings of a tent; and though two of her own female attendants sat at the farther side, there was watching over her a face as beautiful as she had ever beheld, but which was altogether strange to her eye. It was beautiful, as I have said, most beautiful; and though the hair was dressed in the barbarian mode, and the garments were not such as the Romans wore, yet the pure and snowy skin showed tints very different from the dingy complexion of the Huns; and, though Ildica knew not the face, yet there was something in it--something in the exquisite loveliness of those devoted deep blue eyes--that was not unfamiliar to her imagination. It was as if somebody, in former times, had sung, or told, or written to her about eyes like those. Her mind, however, wandered still; and she could not recall where or how such an impression had been made upon her. But she saw, as she moved, those eyes bent upon her with a look of tender pity; and laying her hand upon that which rested on the couch beside her, she would have spoken, but her voice was so weak that she herself started at its altered sound.
"You are better," said Neva, for she it was who sat beside her--"you are better; I see you are better." And though the tongue in which she spoke was but a mixture of Latin with her barbarian dialect, yet her looks spoke eloquently, and Ildica began to remember, or rather to guess, who she was.
Neva watched her gently and assiduously; and Ildica recovered health and strength; and grateful and tender did she feel towards that fair companion, who wound herself day by day so closely round her heart, that she only wondered that Theodore could have continued to love Ildica when he had unknowingly won the heart of Neva. But though Ildica recovered rapidly, that illness had wrought a change. She remained long in deep silent fits of thought. Sometimes, when she was spoken to, her mind, intensely occupied with the dark past or the dim future, seemed to deaden her ear, and she made no reply. But, what was still more strange, she spoke of her mother, she talked of her death, she inquired of her burial, without a tear moistening her eyelids. She would fain have wept; she longed to do so; but no drops, no kind relieving drops came from the dried-up well to give her ease. Her mother and Theodore were the two great themes of her thoughts; and of her lover's coming back she talked with joy and smiles to her own attendants; but, with kindly care, which showed how thoughtful she was for others, she avoided, as far as possible, the mention of his name to Neva.
Bleda's daughter, indeed, was now her chief companion; shared the same tent, and spent whole hours with her on each succeeding day. On Ildica she seemed to look as on a superior being; and seated at her feet, with her arm resting on the fair Dalmatian's knee, she would gaze up into her face, trace all those beautiful lines, and mark the full lustrous eye, the swelling lip, and clear and rounded nostril, pure and defined, but soft and graceful as if chiselled from the Parian marble. Thus she would gaze, and think in her own mind, that it was no wonder such a face and form as that, with such a spirit as shone through all that beauty, had lighted and kept alive, as pure and unextinguished as the fire of Vesta, the flames of love within the heart of one worthy of her--within a heart incapable of forgetfulness or falsehood.