a low voice and seemingly exhausted manner.

"'Susan!' I was by her instantly. She gave me a folded manuscript.
'Between you and me there is no need of words. Take this and read it.
It is the last death I shall cause. Leave me now, dear Susan; perhaps
I may sleep, who knows'

"She put her hands over her eyes--they were burning as coals--and
tried to smile, but the lips refused the mockery. I begged her to lie
down and try to sleep, closed the curtains, and left the room, not a
little anxious to see the contents of the manuscript which I hoped
would explain this new grief.

"The first letter was from a clergyman at the South, containing the
intelligence of Randolph's death, after a long illness, and
transmitting, at his request, the sealed packet to Mrs. Gardner.

"And saddening enough was the recital of the young man's sorrows. He
began with saying that he had scrupulously abstained from ever
mentioning his attachment to Mary while he had lived, but he could not
refrain from asking her pity for him when he could never more disturb
or injure her. He inclosed to her his journal, kept from the first day
he saw her, when he loved her with all the fervor of his southern
nature, and all the confidence of youth. Then followed the shock of
hearing from Mr. Dunbar's own lips of his sister's engagement and
approaching marriage. Then the farewell note of wounded affection that
assumed indifference. Then a long delirious fever; then the news of
Mary's marriage; and then the vain attempt to conquer his ill-fated
love. His delight in his correspondence with her; it had been the life
of his life, all that soothed the downward passage to the grave. To
that grave he had gladly come, feeling that happiness was forever
denied him, and only begged her to believe in his never-varying love
from the moment he met her to this dying hour, when he signed his name
to the last words he should address to mortal.

"All that she had lost--all she might have been, and might have
enjoyed in a union with this young man, so brilliant, so amiable, so
devoted, rushed on my heart, and contrasting with the reality a few
paces off, made me weep bitterly. Oh! had they never loved so kindly!

"I sat long with the manuscript, looking at the writing, some of it
years old, and written with a firm, flowing hand, then varying through
all the vicissitudes of health and feeling, till it trembled and died
away in its last farewell. The peculiar tenderness with wh