One morning I heard that she had been seized with a dangerous illness, and I hastily obeyed the summons which I had received from her mother. What a commotion was that bustling family thrown into. The physicians pronounced her sickness a brain fever. When I reached her bedside, she was raving, and her beautiful eyes gazed vacantly on the nearest and dearest of her friends; even the mother that bore her hung over her unrecognized. She had retired as usual the night before, her mother said, apparently well; but at midnight the family had been awakened by her shrieks and cries. I watched beside her bed weepingly, for I never hoped to see her again in health. The dark wing of Death I felt already drooping over her; and with anguish I listened to the snatches of poetry and song that fell in fragments from her lips. As I was placing a cup on a table in her room, during the day, my eye caught sight of two cards tied with white satin ribbon, and on them I read the names of Mr. Ralph Preston and his bride, with these words hastily written in pencil in Mr. Preston's handwriting on the larger of the two cards, "You will, my lovely friend, rejoice in my happiness, I am sure. Short was our acquaintance, but with the hope that I am not forgotten, I hasten to inform you that the cheerless life-path you deigned to brighten for a few short hours by your kind smiles, is now rendered calm and joyous. I am at last married to the one I have secretly worshiped for years. We both pray you may know happiness exquisite as ours." How quickly I divined the cause of my friend's illness; no longer was it a mystery to me as it was to her family. Those silent cards had been the messengers of evil, and had been mute witnesses of the bitter anguish that had wrung her young heart. There, in the silent night, had she struggled with her agony; and I fancied I heard her calling on Heaven for strength--that Heaven to which we only appeal when overwhelmed by the sad whirldwind caused by our errors or passions. But strength had been denied, and her spirit sank fainting.