Mrs. Lincoln, though poor, was proud and haughty still, and the struggle in her bosom was long and severe, but love for her dying child conquered at last, and to the oft-repeated question, “Promise me, mother, will you not?” she answered, “Yes, Rose, yes, for your sake I give my consent though nothing else could ever have wrung it from me.”

“And, mother,” continued Rose, “may he not be sent for now?  I cannot be here long, and once more I would see him, and tell him that I gladly claim him as a brother.”

A brother!  How heavily those words smote upon the heart of the sick girl.  Henry was yet away, and though in Jenny’s letter Rose herself had once feebly traced the words, “Come, brother,—­do come,” he still lingered, as if bound by a spell he could not break.  And so days went by and night succeeded night, until the bright May morning dawned, the last Rose could ever see.  Slowly up the eastern horizon came the warm spring sun, and as its red beams danced for a time upon the wall of Rose’s chamber, she gazed wistfully upon it, murmuring, “It is the last,—­the last that will ever rise for me.”

William Bender was there.  He had come the night before, bringing word that Henry would follow the next day.  There was a gay party to which he had promised to attend Miss Herndon, and he deemed that a sufficient reason why he should neglect his dying sister, who every few minutes asked eagerly if he had come.  Strong was the agony at work in the father’s heart, and still he nerved himself to support his daughter while he watched the shadows of death as one by one they crept over her face.  The mother, wholly overcome, declared she could not remain in the room, and on the lounge below she kept two of the neighbors constantly moving in quest of the restoratives which she fancied she needed.  Poor Jenny, weary and pale with watching and tears, leaned heavily against William; and Rose, as often as her eyes unclosed and rested upon her, would whisper, “Jenny,—­dear Jenny, I wish I had loved you more.”

Grandma Howland had laid many a dear one in the grave, and as she saw another leaving her, she thought, “how grew her store in Heaven,” and still her heart was quivering with anguish, for Rose had grown strongly into her affection.  But for the sake of the other stricken ones she hushed her own grief, knowing it would not be long ere she met her child again.  And truly it seemed more meet that she with her gray hair and dim eyes should die even then, than that Rose, with the dew of youth still glistening upon her brow, should thus early be laid low.

“If Henry does not come,” said Rose, “tell him it was my last request that he turn away from the wine-cup, and say, that the bitterest pang I felt in dying, was a fear that my only brother should fill a drunkard’s grave.  He cannot look upon me dead, and feel angry that I wished him to reform.  And as he stands over my coffin, tell him to promise never again to touch the deadly poison.”