The instant he was beheld by the woman, she hastened to meet him; placed
the wounded child in his arms, and greeted him with these words:--

'Your brother served in the armies of Rome when our people were at peace
with the Empire. Of his household and his possessions this is all that
the Romans have left!'

She ceased, and for an instant the brother and sister regarded each
other in touching and expressive silence. Though, in addition to the
general characteristics of country, the countenances of the two
naturally bore the more particular evidences of community of blood, all
resemblance between them at this instant--so wonderful is the power of
expression over feature--had utterly vanished. The face and manner of
the young man (he had numbered only twenty years) expressed a deep
sorrow, manly in its stern tranquility, sincere in its perfect innocence
of display. As he looked on the child, his blue eyes--bright, piercing,
and lively--softened like a woman's; his lips, hardly hidden by his
short beard, closed and quivered; and his chest heaved under the armour
that lay upon its noble proportions. There was in this simple,
speechless, tearless melancholy--this exquisite consideration of
triumphant strength for suffering weakness--something almost sublime;
opposed as it was to the emotions of malignity and despair that appeared
in Goisvintha's features. The ferocity that gleamed from her dilated,
glaring eyes, the sinister markings that appeared round her pale and
parted lips, the swelling of the large veins, drawn to their extremest
point of tension on her lofty forehead, so distorted her countenance,
that the brother and sister, as they stood together, seemed in
expression to have changed sexes for the moment. From the warrior came
pity for the sufferer; from the mother, indignation for the offence.