--Ah! yes, I loved him well--now better than
ever;--but I knew it would be thus the very day on which I first saw
him:--read it again,--pray do?"--and, with a still-bewilderment of eye,
she took it from her trembling father, and read it slowly to herself.
"Give me this letter, father;" and she put it in her bosom: and there it
lay,--there it lay through a long and nervous illness, which mercifully
terminated in her death.
For a long time she was enabled to govern and controul her feelings, and
was silent, and, to outward seeming, resigned. She often remarked to her
father, that she could, and did, say daily upon her knees, "Thy will be
done,"--but that tears always followed that sincere, but mournful,
exercise. However her frame at last gave way--she sunk into great
weakness of body, and her mind became affected.
Her father watched her with unceasing solicitude throughout her
sufferings; but he was often driven from her chamber by the agony of his
emotions, as she read over the fatal letter, or sung, which she did
continually, that mournful song of Thecla.
The world it is empty, the heart will die,
There's nothing to wish for beneath the sky:
Thou Holy One, call Thy child away--
I've lived and loved; and that was to-day--
Make ready my grave-clothes to-morrow.
Such was the early and melancholy close of a young life of the loveliest
promise. The severe and sudden horror struck hard upon her fine mind,
and drove it mournfully astray.
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