shed at the
coldness of her limbs, and begged her to allow additional covering to be
put on the bed.

"No, dear Agnes, no; only grant me one favor--do not speak to me--leave
my heart to its own sorrows--to its own misery--to its own despair; for,
Agnes, I feel a presentiment that I shall never see him again."

She pressed her lips against Agnes' cheek when she had concluded, and
Agnes almost started, for that lip hitherto so glowing and warm, felt
hard and cold as marble.

Osborne, who for some time past had spent almost every day at Mr.
Sinclair's, arrived the next morning ere the family had concluded
breakfast. Jane immediately left the table, for she had tasted nothing
but a cup of tea, and placing herself beside him on the sofa, looked
up mournfully into his face for more than a minute; she then caught his
hand, and placing it between hers, gazed upon him again, and smiled. The
boy saw at once that the smile was a smile of misery, and that the agony
of separation was likely to be too much for her to bear. The contrast at
that moment between them both was remarkable. She pale, cold, and almost
abstracted from the perception of her immediate grief; he glowing in
the deep carmine of youth and apparent health--his eye as well as hers
sparkling with a light which the mere beauty of early life never gives.
Alas, poor things! little did they, or those to whom they were so very
dear, imagine that, as they then gazed upon each other, each bore in
lineaments so beautiful the symptoms of the respective maladies that
were to lay them low.

"I wish, Jane, you would try and get up your spirits, love, and see and
be entertaining to poor Charles, as this is the last day he is to be
with you."

She looked quickly at her mother, "The I last, mamma?"

"I mean for a while, dear, until after his I return from the Continent."

She seemed relieved by this. "Oh no, not the last, Charles," she
said--"Yet I know not how it is--I know not; but sometimes, indeed, I
think it is--and if it were, if it were--"

A paleness more deadly spread over her face; and with a gaze of mute and
undying-devotion she clasped her hands, and repeated--"if it should be
the last--the last!"

"I did not think you were so foolish or so weak a girl, Jane," said
William, "as to be so cast down, merely because Charles is taking a skip
to the Continent to get a mouthful of fresh air, and back again. Why,
I know them that go to the Continent four times a year