ess grasp.

"Leave me the hair," said she, in a faint voice. "Thanks--thanks! I am
happy now--I will try to sleep--I am happy--happy now!"

She slept--and never woke again. At the close of an hour or two, her
anxious husband, finding she had not stirred, gently and silently
approached the bedside, and took into his own the fair hand lying on
the coverlid, to ascertain whether fever had ensued. _Fever?_ It was
already cold with the damps of death!

Imagine, if you can, the agony and self-reproach of that bereaved man!
Again and again did he revile himself as her murderer; accusing
_himself_--her father--her _sister_--the whole world. At one moment,
he fancied that her condition had not been properly treated by her
attendants; at another, that the medical man ought not to have left
the house. Nay, hours and hours after she was gone for ever--after
the undertakers had commenced their hideous preparations--even while
she lay stretched before him, white and cold as marble, he persisted
that life might be still recalled; and, but for the better
discrimination of those around him, would have insisted on attempts at
resuscitation, calculated only to disturb, almost sacrilegiously, the
sound peace of the dead!

I was one of the first to learn the heart-rending news of this beloved
being's untimely end; for my old woman having asked permission to
remain with her through the night, (explaining the exigency of the
case,) I could not forbear hurrying to the house as soon as it was
day, in the hope of hearing she was a happy mother. Somehow or other,
I had never contemplated an unfavourable result. The idea of death
never presented itself to me in common with any thing so young and
fair; and as I walked through the park, and crossed the bridge, with
the white cheerful mansion before me, and the morning sun shining full
upon its windows, I thought how gladsome it looked, but could not
forbear feeling that, even with the prospect of losing it--even with
the certainty of beggary, Everard, as a husband and father, was the
fellow most to be envied upon earth!

I reached the house, and the old man who answered my ring at the
office entrance, was speechless from tears. Though usually hard as
iron, he sobbed as if his heart would break. I asked to speak with
Barbara--with my housekeeper. He told me I could not--that she was
"busy laying out the body." I was answered. That dreadful word told me
all--I had no more questions to ask. I car