Her arms, up to the shoulders, were bare, and the snowy whiteness of her skin, beside those dark furs, looked like Indian ivory contrasted with ebony.

Theodore saw her enter with feelings of deep agitation, for he feared lest she should be pained and grieved by the sight of him for whom she had done and suffered so much. It would appear, however, that some one had prepared her for his presence, for she looked not upon him when first she entered, but went round with the rest, and only raised her eyes once to his countenance ere she approached him in turn. That one glance showed Theodore that she recognised him, but was nevertheless quite calm; and when she approached him, and took a cup of wine from one of the attendants to give it to him, she stood by his side, and looking in his face with a melancholy smile, she said aloud, "How art thou, my brother? Art thou well after thy long journey? And hast thou seen the friends thou lovest? And are they happy?"

Theodore could have wept; there was something so sad, and yet so resigned under her grief, in the tone of that fair young creature, who, if ever sorrow spared a human breast, should surely have been sheltered from the arrows of adversity. He strove against his feelings, however, and replied calmly, thanking her for all her kindness and all her generosity. Maximin gazed with some surprise to see the tender interest which the family of the dead king seemed to take in his countryman, but he made no remark aloud; and retiring soon from the banquet, the whole party of journeyers sought repose.

Weariness made most of them sleep long; but Theodore was awake and up by the dawning day. Sleep would not visit him in that dwelling; and with the first gray light of the morning he left the chamber which had been assigned him. He found Zercon the jester stretched, sleeping, on a skin at his door; and the moment the passing of the young Roman woke him, he started up, and ran away through some of the passages of the house. Theodore went on into the porch and gazed out, and in a moment after Neva was by his side.

"I bade poor Zercon watch for you, Theodore," she said, "because I wished to ask you, ere you went, to wander for an hour once more with Neva in the morning woods. Will you not, my brother? I have many a question to ask you, and I cannot ask them here, where everybody may hear them or interrupt them. Will you not come, my brother?"

"Willingly, sweet Neva," replied Theodore, still holding the hand she had given him in his. "Let us go." And they wandered forth together along a path which, winding in among the trees, turned at each step of the hill, showing the woody world below under some new aspect every moment. The wind had cleared the sky, and the day was fine; but Neva seemed more sad than on the night before. She said but little for some way as they wandered on, but asked him questions about his journey in a wild, rambling way. At length, however, with a forced smile but a trembling tone, she said, "And of course you saw your promised bride?"

"I did," said Theodore, "and I told her that I twice owed my life to you, in sickness and in danger."

Neva, however, seemed to take but little notice of his reply. Continuing, apparently in the same train of thought in which she had begun, "And did you think her very beautiful?" she said--"as beautiful as ever?"

"More so," answered Theodore, "far more so."

Neva smiled. "May you be happy!" she said; "may you be happy! Doubtless the time since I saw you last has been a happy time to you and her, but it has been a terrible time to me and mine. You know that they came and slew my father, even on his couch of rest?" and she fixed her full bright eyes upon him with a look of painful earnestness.

Theodore saw that she waited his answer, and replied, "I heard so, for the first time, three days ago, at Margus."

"Did you not know it before?" she cried, eagerly. "Did no one tell it you? Did you not know that it would be so?"

"Never!" answered Theodore. "How could I guess that so fearful, so terrible a deed was so near its accomplishment?"

"Thank God for that!" she cried; "thank God for that! That is peace and balm indeed. But let us sit down here," she added, pausing at a rocky bank, where a break in the woods snowed the country stretched beneath their feet, and the Tibiscus wandering in the distance--"let us sit down here, and talk over it all. Oh, Theodore! my heart has been sad since I saw you. They came and slew my father in the night, and I knelt at the feet of his terrible brother and begged for his life in vain; and afterward they said that it was for what he had done against you that he was slain. I feared and fancied that you had stirred up Attila against him, and I remembered that I had set you free, and that I--I might thus have had a share in my father's death."

She paused for a moment, terribly agitated; but, ere Theodore could find words to comfort her, she went on rapidly: "But think not," she said, "think not, for one moment, that, even had it been so, I would have wished what I had done undone. I saved the innocent from the cruel death they meditated against him. I saved the good and the innocent, and I had naught to do with the rest. Yet it was terrible, Theodore--oh how terrible!--to think that I had aided to spill my father's blood, by saving him that I love;" and, leaning her head upon his shoulder, she wept long and bitterly.

"Weep not, Neva!" said Theodore, "weep not, my sister! You did but what was generous and noble, and that deed had no share in your father's death. All my own followers but one or two had escaped when I was taken, and they, not I, bore to the ears of the king the tidings of what had happened. I did nothing to provoke him against thy father; but, had I been slain, the wrath of Attila would have been still greater. Weep not, dear Neva!" he continued, as her tears, having once more burst forth, flowed on apace; "weep not!" And, holding her in his arms, he called up every argument to console her. He held her in his arms; he used many a tender and endearing epithet; he even pressed his lips upon her cheek; and yet no feeling but one, pure, noble, and generous, was in his heart at that moment. There was a being that loved him with the most devoted affection which the human heart can feel, clinging to him in her deep distress, weeping on his bosom, pouring out her griefs and apprehensions to his ear; and though he could not return her love as love, yet his heart told him that he would be ungrateful if he felt towards her otherwise than as a brother. The kiss that he pressed upon her cheek was not cold, because it was kindly; and the arms which encircled her held her tenderly, because gratefully: but it was with the embrace of fraternal protection. Shame upon those who cannot comprehend such feelings! That kiss and that embrace seemed but to say, "Neva, you have lost your father, but you have yet one in the world who, if he cannot, if he ought not to feel for you as you feel for him, will protect, will console, will sympathize with you--nay, will love you dearly, tenderly, though with but a brother's love."

Neva felt that it was so. She would have started from his arms with fear had there been aught of passion in their touch; she would have fled from him for ever had there been aught of fire on his lips; but it was all kindly tenderness, and she laid her head upon his shoulder to weep as she would have done upon a brother's.

After a while her tears ceased, and she looked up. "You have taken the thorn from my heart, Theodore," she said; "I shall now sleep at nights. My fancy had conjured up many strange things; for though I knew you to be kind and generous, yet I knew you had been greatly wronged, and that the poor Arab, who had watched you with me through a long,