“‘Do you know, George, that, during all the evening I have been tortured with a foreboding that our happiness is destined, like yonder shooting-star, to last only for a while, and then pass away forever? It may be that this is our last evening. I cannot tell in what shape the impending evil will come,’ she said, ‘but this I know, that be it what it may, we shall always love each other, shall we not, George?’ “‘Yes, dearest!’ I replied, kissing her, ‘but dismiss these gloomy thoughts; they arise only from your ill-health. Believe me, we shall continue for long, long years to enjoy our present felicity.’ Ah! me, little did my own feelings coincide with what I said. ‘Cheer up, dearest, I shall return in a fortnight or so, and by that time shall be able to assure you that I shall leave you no more.’ “With words like these I attempted to remove the forebodings of Isabel, but though she smiled faintly in return, I found that I could not wholly dispel the melancholy of her thoughts. I dreaded the parting on the morrow, and accordingly, having deceived her as to the hour of my setting forth, I rose at day-break, kissed her as she lay calmly sleeping, and, tearing myself from her, entered the mail-stage, and before the hour when we usually arose, was miles away from our habitation. “I reached the city, and found my fortune, indeed, trembling on the verge of ruin. For some days its preservation engaged every faculty of my mind, and I found time for nothing else, unless it was to read and answer the letters I daily received from my sweet wife. The times were critical. Stocks of every kind—and nearly my whole fortune was vested in them—were undergoing a fearful depreciation; and one or two heavy loans which had been made out of my estate, and which completed the balance of my wealth, were in a most precarious situation. I soon found it would not only be impossible to settle my affairs so as to rejoin Isabel at the end of the fortnight, but that I must undertake a journey, personally, to a southern city, which would delay me at least a month more; and, accordingly, I penned a hasty note to her on the eve of my setting out, bidding her look forward, at the expiration of this new term, to a happy meeting, and informing her at what post-towns I should look for letters from her. “I set forth on the ensuing day, but, though I enquired at the various post-offices along my route, where I expected letters, yet I did not receive a line from Isabel; and the first epistle which I obtained was a letter which I found lying for me, on my arrival at the port of my destination. It had come from P——, and was written prior to Isabel’s knowledge of my second journey. I have it still by me; every line of it is graven on my heart; my only prayer is that it may be buried with me, for alas!—it is the last letter I ever received from Isabel.