"Wednesday. "All is over. I can hardly command myself sufficiently to write, and yet I must tell you what has happened. Oh, my dear Catherine, how shall I ever forgive myself for leaving poor dear Gertrude; and yet I know that this is foolish, for I was ordered to do so for her sake. But I must come at once to the sad news I have to tell. I left poor Gertrude in the charge of her maid, with strict injunctions to call me if there should be any change; but the poor child seems suddenly to have grown quieter, and at length to have fallen asleep. The maid watched her until just four o'clock, when, overcome with weariness, she herself dropped off into a doze, and on waking at a little before five, was horrified to find herself alone. She flew at once to me, but I had hardly got to the top of the stairs when some one came running up to say that the postman was below, and had just met with poor Gertrude, who had been watching for him at the gate. She enquired eagerly after letters, and on being told there were none, asked for the newspaper, which she at once hurried away with into a part of the grounds called the Wilderness, while the postman, fearing from her manner that something was amiss, came on to the house to tell what had occurred. I need not tell you with what anxiety I hastened to the Wilderness, and there, poor girl, we found her, stretched upon the turf close by the edge of the lake, with the fatal newspaper in her hand. I had her taken carefully to the house, and a man despatched on horseback for the doctor; but before he arrived she had recovered consciousness, only, poor child, to be at once seized with the signs of her approaching trouble. From that moment until she breathed her last--an hour ago --I have never left her side. After nearly thirty hours of the most terrible suffering I have ever witnessed, she at length gave birth to two poor little girls, both so small and weak-looking that it is quite piteous to see them. The elder in especial, which was born about an hour before the second, is so weak and sickly, that the doctor says it is scarcely possible it can live, and, indeed, one can hardly hope that it may. The second seems stronger, but both are very small and weakly even considering their premature birth.