Rachel was coming to see after her, and hearing a ring as she tripped by the front door, opened it. A man handed her a package saying, briefly, "For Miss Ross," and instantly vanished. Ida saw Lynn's hand in the superscription of the bulky parcel, and broke the seal. Two letters were within it; one directed to Ellen Morris; the other,--enclosing a miniature--to herself. "My best, truest friend!" she read, "I cannot trust myself to speak the farewell my heart indites to one who has been a loving and faithful sister to me. It would unman me, and I have occasion for all my manliness at this juncture. I have no regret in the prospect of leaving a world where my horoscope was cast in clouds and storm;--I cannot undergo the pangs of seeing your grief. Destiny will be accomplished, Ida, however insignificant the instrument with which it works. Charley will inform you of the baseness of that which has severed the one shining thread of my existence. Heaven grant you may never know the hatefulness of life, when that for which you thought, toiled, lived, is torn from you! I have struck the reptile who trailed over my Eden-flowers, and reared his head insultingly amid the ruin he helped to effect, and in his unspent malice he would sting me to death. The sting of death is gone! there will be unintentional mercy in the stroke that releases me. I have been mad--I am calmer now. If I know my own heart, I wish him no evil; I shall not attempt his life--I will not imbrue my hands in the blood of the murdered. "You will give the enclosed to my poor Ellen--'_my Ellen_!' she has forbidden me to call her by that name. It may be, she will pity, when no more, the wretch she could not love when living. "My sister and friend! what can I say to you? Forgive my ingratitude in being willing to die before I have made some feeble return for your goodness! Will you wear or keep this image of him, by whom you were never forgotten--not in the death-agony? I have written to Charley, but he will not receive the letter until all is over. I was unwilling to risk this--its contents are too sacred. You are dreaming in your innocent slumbers, of years of peace and joy--I shall not close my eyes but in the sleep that knows no awakening to care and woe. 'The blessing of him who is ready to perish' be upon you! "LYNN." Ida's impulse was to scream for help; but ere her palsied tongue did her bidding, the futility of all attempts to save him stared upon her; the hour--nearly midnight; the illness of their man-servant; Mr. Read's absence; her ignorance of Lynn's locality or plans beyond his suicidal intention--towered, frowning spectres, mountain-high, each with its sepulchral "Impossible!" Some women would have swooned--some sunk down to weep in impotent despair;--the shock over, her energetic spirit rallied to meet the emergency. He should be saved! at the peril of her life, if need be--what were personal convenience and safety?