“‘Bring a light,’ I cried, as I placed my hand on my forehead, which was cold and damp with perspiration.  Mother went to her room, and returned with a candle and came to my bed side.

“I can remember her look of horror, as though it was but yesterday-and her voice when she sobbed, rather than spoke these words:-’My child, O, my poor child, what has happened?’ Then she fainted.

“I learned on the morrow, that my beautiful hair had turned white; not one thread of my deep brown tresses was left, and my features too, were shrunken.  That night’s vision had done the work of years of suffering, and Sibyl Warner, the belle, the heiress, was no longer an object of love.

“A physician was summoned the next morning, who pronounced me suffering under mental hallucination, for I had told my mother all my strange dream or vision.  I had no way to prove that my lover was treacherous, and I alone must suffer.  But Laura.  What was my duty towards her? was my dominant thought, even while I sat writing, a day or two after, a note to Milan, releasing him from his engagement.  Vainly my mother entreated me to see him just once more.  I was inexorable, and there being nothing now to bind us to Europe, we made all possible haste to return to our native land.

“Laura came to bid me good-bye.  I tried to speak my fears to her, but my tongue seemed paralyzed.  I kissed her warmly, and the tears flowed over her pale, lovely face.  We parted.  I knew she would be his bride ere long.  I hoped she would be happy; but the revelation of that night led me to fear that such might not be the case.

“The first week of our voyage home was very pleasant, but soon after, a gale arose, and then a fearful storm set in.  After being tossed by wind and wave five days, our ship went down.  O, that morning so vividly present to my memory now.  My parents were both lost.  I was saved with a few of the passengers, and most of the ship’s crew,—­a vessel bound to my own native port, took us on board.  But what was life to me then, alone, and unloved as I must ever after be.’

“It was not the Sibyl Warner who stepped on shore the day of our arrival who had left it years before; not the young girl of seventeen, but a woman, with love, trust, hope, all departed-a wreck of her former self, and yet within, a strange light glittering.  As one sees, hung over dangerous, impassable ways at night, or half sunken rocks, a light telling of danger, so I had thrown over my entire being a blaze of fire, which, while it guided others, seemed to be consuming myself.  I possessed what is now called ’second sight,’ and could see the motives of persons, and their most secret thoughts and designs.  Life became burdensome because I could not balance the power with any joy, until I learned that I must live for others and not for myself, alone.