Virginia was almost heartbroken at this sudden rupture of a tie that had been formed in her earliest childhood, and strengthened with every subsequent year. I tried to persuade her that the three years which were to intervene before she could make her own decision would pass very quickly; but, hardly heeding my reasonings, she gave herself up to hopeless despair. She was sure, she said, her father never would consent to her union with Philip, and she would never marry without it. Besides, she did not expect to live to be twenty-one. Long before that time she should be in her grave. At first, I paid no attention to these dismal forebodings, thinking them only the natural expressions of an affectionate heart suffering under such a great disappointment. But gradually I began to fear that they should be realized. She would not eat, and grew pale and pined, and her countenance began to wear an unearthly look of patient sorrow and resignation that I never observed without a pang. I knew that her parents had noticed the alteration in Virginia's health and spirits, for hardly a week passed that some pleasant little excursion or journey was not proposed to her. And thus the long warm summer wore away. One afternoon, late in September, I received a note from her, saying that she had just returned from a visit to the Mammoth Cave, and would like to see me, to tell me about it. As I had not seen her for three weeks, I hastened to Mr. Percy's immediately, and running up to her room, entered without knocking at the half-open door. Virginia was sitting in the full light of an afternoon sun, whose rays were streaming in unobstructed by shutters or curtain, seemingly as if the occupant of the room had lost all thought of bodily comfort. Her eyes were fixed on a white cloud floating in the distant sky, and as the wind lifted the heavy bands of hair from her pallid temples, she looked so spiritualized and incorporeal, that I should hardly have been surprised if she had floated out to mingle with the clouds on which she was gazing. "Why, Virginia, have you been sick?" I asked, after our first hurried greetings. "No, dear; do I look badly?" "Very," was my reply, sincere, if impolitic. "I am rather glad to hear it," said Virginia, "though of course it will be painful to me to leave my father and mother, brothers and sisters; still, I have so little to look forward to in this world, that I cannot care to live. I feel, myself, that I am growing weaker every day, and that is one reason that I hurried home; I wanted to see you and leave some messages with you for Philip."