"Good" fever, and could not bring
myself to stir from the chair where they had left me. As to going up
into the drawing-room, it was out of the question; I fancied every step
of the stairs would have morsels of flesh lying on it, and the banisters
would be all smeared with blood and hairs. In short, I had a fit of the
horrors, and sat the whole blessed evening working heart's ease into
Emily's canvas, in a perfect nightmare of horrible fancies. At one
moment I had the greatest mind in the world to send for a cab, and go to
Covent Garden Theatre, and sit in Adelaide's dressing-room; but I was
ashamed to give way to my nerves in that cowardly fashion, and certainly
passed a most miserable evening.... However, let me leave last night and
its horrors, and make haste to answer your questions....

Another pause, dear Harriet, and here I am at this picturesque old
place, Cranford House, paying another visit to ----'s _venerable_
friend, old Lady Berkeley. I have been taking a long walk this morning
with Lady ----, whose London fine-ladyism gave way completely in these
old walks of her early home, to which all the family appear extremely
attached. Her unfeigned delight at the primroses, oxlips, wild cherry
bloom, and varying greens of the spring season made me think that her
lament was not applicable to herself, just then, at any rate. "What a
pity," cried she, "it is that one cannot be regenerated as the earth is
every spring!" _She_ seemed to me to be undergoing a very pretty process
of regeneration even while she spoke. It is touching to observe natural
character and the lingering traces of early impressions surviving under
the overlaying of the artificial soil and growth of after years of
society and conventional worldly habits. She pointed out to me a
picturesque, pretty object in the grounds, over which she moralized with
a good deal of enthusiasm and feeling--an old, old fir-tree, one of the
cedar tribe, a tree certainly many more than a hundred years old, whose
drooping lower branches absolutely lie upon the lawn for yards all round
it. One of these boughs has struck into the ground, and grown up into a
beautiful young tree, already twelve or fourteen feet high, and the
contrast between the vivid coloring and erect foliage of this young
thing, and the rusty, dusky green, drooping branches of the enormous
tree, which seems to hang over and all round it, with parental
tenderness, is quite exquisite. One of them, however, m