At that action, as if endowed with instant vitality from contact with a living being, the figure suddenly started up.
Then, the folds of the dark mantle fell back, disclosing a face as pale in hue as the stone pillars around it; and the voice of the solitary being became audible, uttering in faint, monotonous accents, these words:-- 'He has forgotten and abandoned me!--slay me if you will!--I am ready to die!' Broken, untuned as it was, there yet lurked in that voice a tone of its old music, there beamed in that vacant and heavy eye a ray of its native gentleness.

With a sudden exclamation of compassion and surprise, the Goth stepped forward, raised the trembling outcast in his arms; and, in the impulse of the moment quitting the solitary house, stood the next instant on the firm earth, and under the starry sky, once more united to the charge that he had abandoned--to Antonina whom he had lost.
He spoke to her, caressed her, entreated her pardon, assured her of his future care; but she neither answered nor recognised him.

She never looked in his face, never moved in his arms, never petitioned for mercy.

She gave no sign of life or being, saving that she moaned at regular intervals in piteous accents:--'He has forgotten and abandoned me!' as if that one simple expression comprised in itself, her acknowledgment of the uselessness of her life, and her dirge for her expected death.
The Goth's countenance whitened to his very lips.

He began to fear that her faculties had sunk under her trials.