"There's always hope at your age!"
"The actress was only two years older than I am."
"What, was she an actress who is just dead?"
"Yes. And see what fate is! She had been as beautiful as daylight, and had money, carriages, diamonds; but, unfortunately, the smallpox disfigured her, and then came want and misery, and, at last, death in a hospital. No one ever came to see her; and yet, four or five days ago, she told me, she had written to a gentleman whom she had formerly known in her gay days, and who had been much in love with her. She wrote to him to beg him to claim her dead body, because she was wretched at the idea of thinking she would be dissected—cut in pieces."
"And did the gentleman come?"
"No. Every moment she was asking for him and perpetually saying, 'Oh, he'll come! Oh, he'll be sure to come!' And yet she died without any one coming, and what she so much dreaded will befall her poor frame. After having been rich and happy, to die so is very terrible! We, at least, only change our miseries!"
"I wish," said Lorraine, after a moment's hesitation, "I wish you would render me a service!"
"What is it?"
"If I die, as is probable, before you go from here, will you claim my body? I have the same dread as the actress, and have laid aside the small sum of money necessary to bury me."
"Oh, do not have such ideas!"