tchell, with whom I had promised to go, could not get away from
visitors at her own house sooner.

I spent the evening with Cecilia and Mr. Combe on Monday. They are both
tired from the effect of their journey still, and look fagged and ill.
They have both got the influenza too, which does not mend matters; and I
am struck with the alteration in Mr. Combe's appearance. He looks old,
as well as ill, and very sad--naturally enough on his return to this
place, where his dear brother died.

The _becomingness_ of Cecilia's gray, or rather white, hair struck me
more than any other change in her. She has lost the appearance of
hardness (coarseness), which, I think, mingled slightly with her
positive beauty formerly, and is to my mind handsomer now than I ever
remember her. She is not nearly so stout as she was; her complexion has
lost its excess of color, has become softer; and the contrast of her
fine dark eyes and silvery curls gives her a striking resemblance to
Gainsborough's lovely portrait of her mother. She is looking thin and
ill, but seems tolerably cheerful.

At the end of my engagement at the theatre, during the whole of which I
shall remain with the Mairs, I shall spend a few days with her and Mr.
Combe; after which I shall come as far south as Howick, and stay a day
or two with B---- G----, and then cross over to Manchester to the
Ellesmeres.

I shall hardly be in London before the third week in November. I have
had a letter from my sister, announcing their positive return in the
spring; but, as she says they will only leave Rome in May, it is
improbable that I should see them at all, as I propose going to America
by the steamer of the first of June; but Heaven knows what may happen
between this and then. Nobody has the same right to "bother" me, as you
call it, that you have, for I love nobody so well; besides, as for
Emily, she is a deuced deal quicker in her processes than you are, and
snaps up one's affairs by the nape of the neck, as a terrier does a rat,
and unless one is tolerably alert one's self, she is off with one in her
zeal in no time, whither one would not....

I wish you would tell Mrs. Fitzhugh, with my love, that a man who was
acting Joseph Surface with me the other night said to me, "Now, my dear
Lady Teazle, if you could but be persuaded to commit a trifling _fore
paw_ (_faux pas_)."

Give my love to dear Emily.

Ever as ever yours,