the door ... and alas! no chance of hearing
your step upon the stair.... Whilst I was regretting all this,
suddenly, the knock did come, to my utter astonishment. I ran
to the stair, and in a moment heard Sheridan's voice. I do
not know why, but I took a horror of seeing him, and hurried
Sally down to say I was out. I heard him answer: 'Tell her I
call'd twice this morning, and want particularly to see her,
for I know she is at home.' Sally protested I was out, and S.
answered: 'Then I shall walk up and down before the door till
she comes in,' and there he is walking sure enough. It is
partly all the nonsense he talk'd all this year, and the
hating to see any one when I cannot see you, that makes me
dislike letting him in so much."

He solemnly did sentry-go for nearly an hour, she goes on to say. In
that hour he was in his fifty-first year, she in her fortieth.

If she revealed these sorry doings to Antinous with the view of
fanning embers, she did not succeed in drawing more than a languid
protest from him. "As to Sheridan, in the morning I purposely staid
in my room till the time of our setting out, and only saw him as I was
getting into the carriage, so had nothing more to tell.... You say I
am not angry enough. I am provok'd, vex'd, and asham'd. To feel more
deeply I must care for the person who offends me...." I cannot myself
read either vexation or shame in her reports. Provocation I can and do
read--but it is not she who is provoked.

In 1804, Antinous in Petersburg, there are new antics to record. "You
will think I live at the play; I am just return'd from Drury Lane....
Sheridan persists in coming every night to us. He says one word to my
sister; then retires to the further corner of the box, where with
arms across, deep and audible sighs, and sometimes _tears_! he remains
without uttering and motionless, with his eyes fix'd on me in the most
marked and distressing manner, during the whole time we stay. To-night
he followed us in before the play begun, and remained as I tell you
thro' the play and farce. As we were going I dropped my shawl
and muff; he picked them up and with a look of ludicrous humility
presented them to Mr. Hill to give me." And this was the author of
_The School for Scandal_.

Next year, being that of Trafalgar, and Sheridan's fifty-fourth, he
began a course of persecution which definitely marks an access of
dementia. The affair took an