"I cannot run," said I, turning round, and panting for breath. "Pray, pray, leave me now. You torture me by staying. Come this evening, and I shall thank you for your visit." It was long before I could induce him to leave me.
The moment I was alone, I despatched the following note to Lord Ponsonby.
"I thank you that you renounced my prayers; for you thus cured me of half my esteem. It was my fixed determination never to intrude myself again on your attention; but the Duke of Argyle has mentioned to me this morning my sister Amy having written to you. Once more then, Ponsonby, I implore you, as you would save me from self-destruction, satisfy my wretched mind in what cannot injure Lady Ponsonby. Declare to me—nobody has or shall.... Ponsonby, I am addressing you for the last time. Have mercy on the dreadful agitation of my mind and answer me directly. You are quite happy, Argyle says; and I in the very flower of my age am dying. One line can relieve me perhaps from madness! Your watch, chain and ring are sealed up. I could not look on them. I never shall again. My poor eyes have looked their last on them and you; and I shall never write to you again; therefore, God bless you. When age shall overtake you, in some moment of affliction, perhaps you will remember me and what I could have been to you. Adieu."
I despatched my letter almost without hope. "If he could resist the other," thought I, "this is more stupid, and less likely to affect him."
The agitation Argyle's stay had occasioned produced an increase of fever. Towards night I began to think seriously of dying, and not without reason, being reduced to a mere skeleton, and having now been afflicted with cough and extreme difficulty of respiration for almost five months. There is a restlessness in all disorders of the mind, which the sufferer imagines can be best relieved by exercise. About nine o'clock, having read the New Testament for several hours, I felt a strange desire to behold the outside of Lord Ponsonby's house once again before I died. I had avoided passing within a mile of it since he had left me, and this night I fancied something good would turn up from going there, if I could but find strength to accomplish my design. To have mentioned it to my housekeeper would have been at once to put it out of the question. I really believe she would have locked me into my room, while she had sent for my sister and Dr. Bain; therefore, getting rid of her and of my footman, I gained a hackney-coach unobserved, and was set down in Park Lane, very near Lord Ponsonby's house. It was a fine mild evening, and the watchman was calling the hour of ten. I was terribly afraid of him, and my breath failed me when I tried to hasten out of his way. I wandered about till I could stand no longer, and, with difficulty, contrived to obtain a seat on the steps of a large portico-door.
The atmosphere now began to threaten rain, which soon fell in torrents. A poor shivering girl sought shelter by my side. She was coughing most dreadfully, and her breath was still more oppressed than my own. "That cough," thought I, "is not feigned, and perhaps this wretched creature is thus nightly exposed to the inclement weather, to obtain existence by the prostitution of her person to unfeeling and drunken strangers: and what am I, that I should turn my back on a sister in affliction?" I immediately inquired of her why she left her home with such a dreadful cough.
The poor creature turned her head towards me in much apparent surprise. She was not beautiful, nor was she rouged, and her dress was rather neat than tawdry. The set characters of death appeared to me to be stamped on features which once had been very lovely.
"I have no home," was the poor girl's answer. "I had half a bed, till last night," added she, "but you see what I suffer, and, therefore, being unable to obtain a single shilling, they have turned me into the streets."
"Dreadful! dreadful!" I ejaculated. "Good God! how could you ever degrade yourself thus? What labour would not have been preferable at the beginning!"