All the letters fell from my hands. I was sobbing without tears, when I
perceived another little note in the handwriting of the old man, her
husband; it had slid between the pages as I was unsealing the first
envelope.
There were only these words: "She breathed her last, her hand in mine,
a few hours after writing you her last farewell. I have lost my
daughter.... Be my son for the few days I have yet to live. She is
there upon her bed, as if asleep, with an expression on her features of
one whose last thought smiled at seeing something beyond our world. She
never was so lovely; and as I look on her I require to believe in
immortality.... I loved you through her; for her sake love me!"