I am off to-day with Mrs. Mitchell to Ardoch, where I stay only to-morrow, and return Friday to act here on Saturday. Having promised to go, I do not like to break my word, otherwise it seems to me rather a fuss, and a long way to go for one day's rest. Originally our plan was to spend two or three days there, that being all I could then give; but Mrs. Mitchell, 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,
Fanny.
My dearest Hal,