“Oh, Everard, don’t look like that. You frighten me. Cry, can’t you, just as I do? Tears would do you good.” “Cry?” he repeated. “How can I cry with this band like red-hot iron around my heart, forcing it up to my throat. I shall never cry again, or laugh, never. Bee, I know you think me foolish and wicked, too, perhaps; half the world would think it, and say I had no right to love Rossie as I do, and perhaps I have not; but the dearest, sweetest memory of my life is the memory of what she was to me. I know she could never be mine. I gave that up long ago, and still the world was pleasanter to me because she was in it. Oh, Rossie, my darling, how can I live on and know that you are dead?” Then Beatrice did not attempt to comfort him, for she knew she could not, but she sat by him in silence until he arose and went away, saying to her at parting, and as if he had not told her before, “Rossie is dead.” CHAPTER XLIII. THE LETTERS. The next day’s mail brought four foreign letters to Rothsay,—one for Everard, one for Beatrice, one for Josephine, and one for Lawyer Russell. They were all mailed in Vienna, within two days of each other, and the one addressed to Everard was as follows: “VIENNA, April —, ——. “MR. EVERARD FORREST:—_Dear Sir_—I hardly know why I write to you first, unless it is because I know that what I have to say will hurt you most; you, who I think loved my darling Rossie. You have perhaps received the _American Register_ which I ordered to be sent you from the office in Paris when I forwarded the notice, and so you know why I write to you now. I have written to you from time to time of Rossie’s failing health, but never told you as bad as it was, for I did not wish to alarm you unnecessarily, and kept hoping that change of scene might bring the improvement I so greatly desired. But nothing helped her, though she never complained of anything but fatigue. ‘So tired,’ was all she ever said of herself, and she seemed like some sweet flower fading gradually. “At Haelder-Strauchsen, a little town among the Austrian hills, I found she was not able to go on as I wished to do, to Vienna, and so we staid there, where she had the best of care. Neither of us thought the end so near until the last day, when she failed rapidly, and talked of you and Miss Belknap, and told me to tell you how much she loved you both, and that you were not to be sorry she was dead, for she was only going home, and Heaven was as near Austria as it was to America. She was so beautiful in her coffin, with a smile of peace upon her face, as if she were resting at last. The people literally covered her with flowers, and strangers’ tears fell fast over her coffin as we laid her in the grave.