CIV.
All the letters fell from my hands. I was sobbing without tears, when I perceived another little note in the handwriting of the old man, her husband; it had slid between the pages as I was unsealing the first envelope.
There were only these words: "She breathed her last, her hand in mine, a few hours after writing you her last farewell. I have lost my daughter…. Be my son for the few days I have yet to live. She is there upon her bed, as if asleep, with an expression on her features of one whose last thought smiled at seeing something beyond our world. She never was so lovely; and as I look on her I require to believe in immortality…. I loved you through her; for her sake love me!"