She composed herself as if to slumber. I, too, retired to my crib in a closet within her room. The night passed in quietness. Quietly her doom must at last have come—peacefully and painlessly. In the morning she was found without life, nearly cold, but all calm and undisturbed. Her previous excitement of spirits and change of mood had been the prelude of a fit; one stroke sufficed to sever the thread of an existence so long fretted by affliction.