understand. I took the
opportunity of saying, that I was going to write to her family, and
asked how I should address them.

"My family!" said she, "I have none. They are all gone now!"

I thought her mind was wandering. "Your father and mother," said I,
"where are they?" My heart smote me as I uttered the words, but the
question was necessary.

"I have no father and mother!"

"Nor brothers and sisters? Pardon me, but I must ask."

"You need not ask, because I will tell you. There were many of us once,
but I am the last!"

I could not go on, yet it must be done.

"But you have friends, who will come to you?"

"Yes; I have a grandfather. He lives in Hampshire. He is very old, but
he will come to me, if he still lives. If not!"----

"He _will_ come," said I, "I will write to him directly."

"I will write myself!" exclaimed she, starting up. "He will not believe
the story unless I write myself. Who _would_ believe it?"

I assured her she should write the next day; but I positively forbad
such an exertion at present. She yielded; she was indeed in no condition
for writing. Her mind seemed in an unnatural state; and I was by no
means sure that she had given a correct account of herself. I wrote to
her grandfather, on the supposition that she had; and was quite
satisfied when, in the evening, she gave me, in few words, her family
history. She had been relieved, though exhausted, by tears; and her mind
was calm and rational. She was indeed the last of her family. Her mother
had died a few weeks before, after a lingering illness; and the sole
surviving brother and sister had been prevailed on to take this tour,
to recruit their strength and spirits, after their long watching and
anxiety. They were always, as I discovered, bound together by the
strongest affection; and now that they had been made by circumstances
all in all to each other, they were thus separated! Will not my readers
excuse my attempting to describe such grief as her's must have been?

Her grandfather arrived on the earliest possible day. He was old, and
had some infirmities; but his health was not, as he assured us, at all
injured by his hurried and painful journey. Nothing could be more tender
than his kindness to his charge; though he was, perhaps, too far
advanced in this life, and too near another, to feel the pressure of
this kind of sorrow, as a younger or weaker mind would have done.

I could not help indulging in much painful conjecture