"I will write myself!" exclaimed she, starting up. "He will not believe
the story unless I write myself. Who _would_ believe it?"

I assured her she should write the next day; but I positively forbad
such an exertion at present. She yielded; she was indeed in no condition
for writing. Her mind seemed in an unnatural state; and I was by no
means sure that she had given a correct account of herself. I wrote to
her grandfather, on the supposition that she had; and was quite
satisfied when, in the evening, she gave me, in few words, her family
history. She had been relieved, though exhausted, by tears; and her mind
was calm and rational. She was indeed the last of her family. Her mother
had died a few weeks before, after a lingering illness; and the sole
surviving brother and sister had been prevailed on to take this tour,
to recruit their strength and spirits, after their long watching and
anxiety. They were always, as I discovered, bound together by the
strongest affection; and now that they had been made by circumstances
all in all to each other, they were thus separated! Will not my readers
excuse my attempting to describe such grief as her's must have been?

Her grandfather arrived on the earliest possible day. He was old, and
had some infirmities; but his health was not, as he assured us, at all
injured by his hurried and painful journey. Nothing could be more tender
than his kindness to his charge; though he was, perhaps, too far
advanced in this life, and too near another, to feel the pressure of
this kind of sorrow, as a younger or weaker mind would have done.

I could not help indulging in much painful conjecture as to the fate of
this young creature, when she should lose her last remaining stay: a
period which could not be far distant. But on this point I obtained some