her recovery, for she knew there was no hope.  Her husband had let fall hints of being so deeply pledged to Dupont, that his liberty or perhaps his life depended on his union with Mary, and could she wish her child to live to be the wife of such a man, yet could she see her die?  What pen can describe the anguish of that fond mother, as for weeks she watched and tended her senseless child, or the contending feelings that wrung her heart when Mary woke again to consciousness and misery, and asked her, in a voice almost inarticulate from weakness, what had happened—­why she was thus?  Truth gradually broke upon her mind, and Mary too soon remembered all.  The physician said she was recovering, that she would quickly be enabled to leave her bed and go about as usual.  Greville swore he would no longer be prevented seeing her, and Mary made no opposition to his entrance.  Calmly and passively she heard all he had to say; what he told her then she did not repeat in writing to Herbert.  She merely said that she had implored him to wait till her health was a little more restored; not to force her to become the wife of Dupont, till she could stand without support beside the altar, and he had consented.

“Be comforted, then, my beloved Herbert,” she wrote, as she concluded this brief tale of suffering.  “They buoy me up with hopes that in a very few months I shall be as well as ever I was.  I smile, for I know the blight has fallen, and I shall never stand beside an earthly altar; all I pray is, that death may not linger till my father’s patience be exhausted, and he vent on my poor mother all the reproaches which my lingering illness will, I know, call forth.  Oh, my beloved Herbert, there are moments when I think the bitterness of death is passed, when I am so calm, so happy, I feel as if I had already reached the confines of my blissful, my eternal home; but this is not always granted me.  There are times when I can think only on the happiness I had once hoped to share with you when heaven itself seemed dimmed by the blessedness I had anticipated on earth.  Herbert, I shall never be another’s wife, and it will not be misery to think of me in heaven.  Oh, no, we shall meet there soon, very soon, never, never more to part.  Why does my pen linger?  Alas! it cannot trace the word farewell.  Yet why does it so weakly shrink? ’tis but for a brief space, and we shall meet where that word is never heard, where sorrow and sighing shall be no more.  Farewell, then, my beloved Herbert, beloved faithfully, unchangeably in death as you have been in life.  I know my last prayer to you is granted ere even it is spoken:  you will protect and think of my poor mother; you will not permit her to droop and die of a broken heart, with no kind voice to soothe and cheer.  I feel she will in time be happy; and oh, the unutterable comfort of that confiding trust.  Once more, and for the last time, farewell, my beloved; think only that your Mary is in heaven, that her spirit, redeemed and blessed, waits for thee near the Saviour’s throne, and be comforted.  We shall meet again.”