Alas! to die among strangers is usually the fate of those who are thus lured from their homes by a deceitful hope. There, where Nature wears a perpetual verdure--where the fervid sun brings forth a luxuriance of vegetation unknown in more northern regions, the wearied spirit sinks to repose, soothed, or saddened, by the glow of existence around. A spacious apartment on the southern side of a highly ornamented villa, opened into a magnificent garden, filled with orange-trees, oleanders, and many other gorgeous flowers peculiar to the climate of Cuba; while in the distance the sunlight gleamed upon a row of towering palms, whose stately columns, crowned by their verdant coronal, resembled the pillars of some mighty temple, which found a fitting canopy in the blue arch of heaven, glowing with the gorgeous hues of a tropical sunset. The floor of this room was inlaid with marble of different colors, and the couch and windows were draped with snowy lace, lightly embroidered at the edges, and looped with cords of blue and silver--tables with marble tops, supporting porcelain vases filled with flowers, were placed between the windows, for these ephemeral children of sunshine were dear to the heart of the dying one. Beside one of these stood a large cushioned chair, in which reclined a young man of delicate features and wasted form. He appeared in the last stages of his fell disease, and the friends who had received him beneath their roof to die, wondered that he should have been deluded with the hope that health could ever again reanimate his bowed and shrunken form. There was an expression of care upon his sharpened features--a feverish restlessness in his manner, which betrayed the spirit's unrest. At his feet sat a young girl, whose brilliant complexion and pale-brown hair betrayed her Saxon origin; the finely rounded figure, the delicately formed feet and hands, and the gracefully turned head and bust, were all evidences of the grade of life to which she belonged. She held the burning hand of the invalid between her own soft, cool palms, and sung in a sweet low voice an old ballad which told of the ancient greatness of the Saxon race. At a short distance from them sat an elderly lady, clad in deep mourning, and her saddened countenance corresponded well with her weeds. The young man made an impatient movement, and said--"Sing not to me England's former prowess, dear Edith. What to the dying can such themes be but a bitter mockery? Take your guitar, my sister, and throw your soul into its vibrating strings, while you sing me such a lay as I can fancy the angels of Heaven to be pouring forth around the throne of God." "Shall I sing the chants of our church, dearest Edgar?" said Edith in a subdued voice.