When this reaches you I shall be in the grave, where the scorn and contempt of the world cannot harm me. The awful abyss of eternity is before me, and into its depths I blindly plunge—whither I care not—any where, any where to leave earth, with its curses on the fallen, and to crush out Memory’s page of past purity. There is but one ray of comfort in the dark Hereafter—the thought that in the realms of gloom to which I am going I will not meet the sad reproof of my mother’s face.
Dying, I leave no reproaches for the dead, no warning for the living. I fell through my own weakness, and my eternal doom will be just; but oh! my poor heart breaks as I think of what I was and what I might have been.
To you, who tried to save me, my life’s last pulse will be a throb of gratitude. I dare not pray for you, but He who suffered Magdalen to weep upon His feet will reward you.
Farewell, forever farewell!
Lulie.”
As I opened the sheet to read the last lines a little flower fell out on the floor. Carlotta picked it up, and, bursting into tears, placed it in my hand.
It was a little snow-drop, with its petals powdered with soot.
Carlotta has gone in with the letter to mother, and I sit alone in the balcony, thinking of Lulie. And the red light dies out in the West, and the stars shine down from the sky, and the stars shine back from the sea, and I am still gazing far over the gray waters towards the land that I fought for—a land where orphans’ tears meet widows’ wails, and maidens wear the mournful pledge of battle-broken troth—a land where want and woe are rife, and the burdened people bow beneath the yoke of conquest; and yet, from all the wealth and luxury that surround me, my Southern heart turns with all the yearning of a child back to my Southern Home.
Finis.