AGAIN AT WINDSOR.
I must mention a laughable enough circumstance. Her majesty inquired of me if I had ever met with Lady Hawke? “Oh yes,” I cried, “and Lady Say and Sele too.” “She has just desired permission to send me a novel of her own Writing,” answered her majesty.
“I hope,” cried I, “’tis not the ‘Mausoleum of Julia!’”
But yes, it proved no less! and this she has now published and sends about. You must remember Lady Say and Sele’s quotation from it.[275] Her majesty was so gracious as to lend it me, for I had some curiosity to read it. It is all of a piece: all love, love, love, unmixed and unadulterated with any more worldly materials.
I read also the second volume of the “Paston Letters,” and found their character the same as in the first, and therefore read them with curiosity and entertainment.
The greater part of the month was spent, alas! at Windsor, with what a dreary vacuity of heart and of pleasure I need not say. The only period of it in which my spirits could be commanded to revive was during two of the excursions in which Mr. Fairly was of the party; and the sight of him, calm, mild, nay cheerful, under such superior sorrows—struck me with that sort of edifying admiration that led me, perforce, to the best exertion in my power for the conquest of my deep depression. If I did this from conscience in private, from a sense of obligation to him in public I reiterated my efforts, as I received from him all the condoling softness and attention he could possibly have bestowed upon me had my affliction been equal or even greater than his own.