“We enjoyed the ‘occasion’ heartily. How could I do otherwise when my attendant groomsman was ordered for the affair from Charlottesville?—the very youth who smote my already beriddled heart when I was up in that region. He is a cousin of the Raglands—Charley Massie by name—and the arrangement was Mary’s (bless her heart!). Mr. Budwell, the bridegroom, was indisputably the handsomest man in the room. This was as it should be; but I never attended another wedding where this could be said with truth. My knight was the next best-looking, and for once I was content with a second-best article.” I allude in this letter to “Cousin Mollie’s” illness, but with no expression of anxiety as to the result. She had been delicate ever since I could recollect anything. She went to Saratoga every summer, and now and then to Florida in the winter. The only intimation I ever had from her as to the cause of her continued singlehood was in answer to the girlish outburst: “Cousin Mary, you must have been beautiful when you were young! You will always be charming. I can’t comprehend why you have never married!” Her speech was ever even and sweet. I detected a ring of impatience or of pain in it, as she said: “Why should I marry, Namesake? To get a nurse for life?” I had suspected all along that she had a history known to none of us. After that I knew it, and asked no more questions. Patient, brave, unselfishly heroic— “The sweetest soul That ever looked with human eyes,” —she lingered day after day, now weaker, now rallying, until she spoke her own conviction to me one day in late July, as I sat by, fanning her, and no one else was present. I smiled as she opened her large dark eyes, the only beauty left in the wasted face, and saw me. “You are better, dear! We shall have you up and out driving before long.” “No, dear child!”—infinite weariness in tone and look. “The old clock has run clean down!” I did not believe it, and I said it stoutly aloud, and to myself. She seemed no more languid—only drowsy—the next afternoon, as I fluttered into the room and leaned over her in a glow of excitement: “Cousin Mollie, darling! I have come in to say that Junius Fishburn is down-stairs. He is in town for a day on his way to Newport.” The great eyes opened wide, a smile lighted them into liveliness. “Oh, I am so glad!” she gasped. She was “glad” of everything that gave me pleasure. I had never doubted that. I had never gone to her with a pain or a pleasure without getting my greedy fill of sympathy. When I had said a hearty “_bon voyage!_” to my caller, I went back to tell her of the interview. She was dying. We watched by her from evening to morning twilight. Ned Rhodes, who was in Boston when he got my letter, telling briefly what had come to us, sent me lines I read then for the first time. Had the writer shared that vigil with us, he could not have described it more vividly: