ust short of, and therefore worse than, death--crush,
instead of killing and releasing one....

I was reading over "The Hunchback" last night, and could not go through
the scenes between Julia and Clifford, when he assumes the character of
Lord Rochdale's secretary, without an agony of crying. I do not see how
I am ever to act it again intelligibly, but I suppose when I _must_ do
it I _shall_. Things that have to be done are done, somehow or other.

God bless you, my dear Hal.

I am ever yours,
FANNY.

One word to Dorothy.

Now, my beloved and best Dorothy, haven't you enough to do with that
most troublesome soul, Harriet, without being my "good angel" too? [Miss
W---- often went by the name of Harriet's "good angel."] I have never
seen mine; but if I have one, I should think he or she must be a sort of
spiritual heavenly steam-engine, _a three-hundred angel-power_, in order
effectually to take care of me.

My dearest Hal, I have missed the dear nuisance of your letters so
dreadfully these few days past, that I began seriously to meditate
writing to you to know if I had offended you in any way. As for how I
fare in this cold weather, the weather is nothing to me, and I used not
to mind cold at all, but rather to like it; but my flesh is forsaking my
bones at such a rate that I am beginning to shiver for want of covering,
and I think to be reduced to a skeleton--a live one, I mean--while the
thermometer is as low as it is will be very uncomfortable.

The satisfaction I had in my visit to my brother was that of seeing a
person for whom I have a very warm affection, and, in some respects, a
very sincere admiration. I believe, too, it was a comfort to poor John
to see me and receive the expressions of my love and sympathy.... For
his warm heart, his truthfulness and great simplicity of character, his
worldly poverty, his great intellectual wealth, but, above all, for that
he is my brother, I love him. He and his children are living in a poor
small cottage, on a wild corner of common near Cassiobury. How I thought
of our old--no, our young days, driving along past "The Grove" and the
Cassiobury Park paling. My brother's present home is certainly not an
extravagant residence, and though, of course, sufficient for absolute
necessary comfort (how much comfort is _necessary_?), is nothing
more.... John has advertised in the _Ti