'I foreboded it, coward, when I first looked on you! I prepared for it when I wounded you! I made sure that when my anger again threatened this new ruler of your thoughts and mover of your actions, you should have lost the power to divert it from her again! Think you that, because my disdain has delayed it, my vengeance on her is abandoned?
Long since I swore to you that she should die, and I will hold to my purpose! I have punished you; I will slay her! Can you shield her from the blow to-night, as you shielded her in your tent?
You are weaker before me than a child!' She ceased abruptly, for at this moment a noise of hurrying footsteps and contending voices became suddenly audible from without.

As she heard it, a ghastly paleness chased the flush of anger from her cheeks.
With the promptitude of apprehension she snatched the sword of Hermanric from under Antonina, and ran it through the staples intended to hold the rude bar of the door.

The next instant the footsteps sounded on the garden path, and the next the door was assailed.
The good sword held firm, but the frail barrier that it sustained yielded at the second shock and fell inwards, shattered, to the floor.
Instantly the gap was darkened by human forms, and the firelight glowed over the repulsive countenances of two Huns who headed the intruders, habited in complete armour and furnished with naked swords.
'Yield yourself prisoner by Alaric's command,' cried one of the barbarians, 'or you shall be slain as a deserter where you now stand!' The Goth had risen to his feet as the door was burst in.

The arrival of his pursuers seemed to restore his lost energies, to deliver him at once from an all-powerful thraldom.

An expression of triumph and defiance shone over his steady features when he heard the summons of the Hun.