herself.

It was a work not soon over, but she finished it at length. The packets
were assorted and tied with new ribbon, and she lay down for a few
minutes to rest.

"You will give them to him, Aimee?" she said. "I think he will come some
day; but if he does not, you must keep them yourself. I should not like
people to read them--afterwards. Love-letters won't stand being read by
strangers. I have often laughed and told him ours would n't. I am going
to write a last one, however, this afternoon. You are to give it him,
with the 'dead' letter--but they are all dead letters, are they not?"

"Dolly," said Aimee, with a desperate effort, "you speak as if you were
sure you were--going."

There was a silence, and then a soft, low, tremulous laugh,--the merest
echo of a laugh. Despite her long suffering Dolly was Dolly yet. She
would not let them mourn over her.

"Going," she said, "well--I think I am. Yes," half reflectively, "I
think I must be. It cannot mean anything else,--this feeling, can it?
It was a long time before I quite believed it myself, Aimee, but now I
should be obliged to believe it if I did not wish to."

"And do you wish to, now?"

That little silence again, and then--

"I should like to see Grif,--I want Grif,--that is all."

She managed to write her last love-letter after this, and to direct
it and tie it with the letter which had returned to her,--the "dead"
letter. But the effort seemed to tire her very much, and when all was
done and her restless excitement had died out, she looked less like
herself than ever. She could talk no more, and was so weak and prostrate
that Aimee was alarmed into summoning Miss MacDowlas.

But Miss MacDowlas could only shake her head. "We cannot do anything to
rouse her," she said. "It is often so. If the end comes, it will come in
this way. She feels no pain."

That night Aimee wrote to those at home. They must come at once if they
wanted to see Dolly. She watched all night by the bedside herself;
she could not have slept if she had gone to her own room, and so she
remained with Dolly, watching her doze and waken, starting from nervous
sleeps and sinking into them again.

"There will not be many nights through which I can watch," she said
to herself. "Even this might be the last." And then she turned to the
window, and cried silently, thinking of Grif, and wondering what she
should say to him, if they ever met again.

How could she say to him, "Dolly is dea