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"to dwell for a moment on the agony of sorrow that he must feel did he love me with a love like mine own, and had to part? It soothes me to feel that he will be spared that bitter, that terrible despair." With a self-forgetting affectionate forethought does she in her dying letter to her father seek to promote her husband's future happiness, praying even "that she whom he marries may be to Lord Norborne as a daughter." "My father, I charge you with the care of his happiness; think that it is the last, the dearest wish of your child. His ties will become yours, and a new growth of kindly interests and warm affections will spring up under the shadow of the old. If, as I sometimes hope, the departed spirit is permitted to retain its affections in another world, how tenderly will I watch over you!"
This is, indeed, a triumph over self, which only genuine Christian principle could achieve; and to this sacred influence all that is amiable and lovely and pure in Constance Courtenaye is throughout her brief life's history ascribed. This, too, supports her on her death-bed,—a scene, how pathetically given and, oh! how different in its light of immortal hope from the dying hour of Guido, elsewhere described! Sweetly does she commend her husband and father to each other's mutual care: her only request to that husband so purely and devotedly loved, and the only words in which she trusts herself to breathe aught of that affection-(yet what a volume of meaning lies therein!)—speak to the inmost soul—"Love my father, were it only for the great love I have borne to you."
The source whence her spirit's strength had been derived is shown to us in her last act,—the gift of her own Bible to her father,—and in the words which accompany that gift, together with the language of her dying letter: "This has been my constant com-
