After that she sat for some time silent, absorbed in deep meditation, and cowering over the fire, apparently unconscious of the curiosity with which she was still regarded by the Goth.

At length she suddenly looked up, and observing his eyes fixed on her, arose and beckoned him to the seat that she occupied.
'Did you know how utterly forsaken I am,' said she, 'you would not wonder as you do, that I, a stranger and a Roman, have sought you thus.
I have told you how lonely was my home; but yet that home was a refuge and a protection to me until the morning of this long day that is past, when I was expelled from it for ever! I was suddenly awakened in my bed by--my father entered in anger--he called me--' She hesitated, blushed, and then paused at the very outset of her narrative.

Innocent as she was, the natural instincts of her sex spoke, though in a mysterious yet in a warning tone, within her heart, abruptly imposing on her motives for silence that she could neither penetrate nor explain.

She clasped her trembling hands over her bosom as if to repress its heaving, and casting down her eyes, continued in a lower tone:-- 'I cannot tell you why my father drove me from his doors.

He has always been silent and sorrowful to me; setting me long tasks in mournful books; commanding that I should not quit the precincts of his abode, and forbidding me to speak to him when I have sometimes asked him to tell me of my mother whom I have lost.