"Dear brother,
"Most probably you will have thought me very inexcusable for not having writ to you. You will be surprised, too, to be told that, except your letter just after we arrived, we have never received one line from Bath. We suppose for certain that there are letters somewhere, in which case we shall have sent to every place almost but the right, whither, I hope, I have now sent also. You will soon see me in England. Everything on our side has at last succeeded. Miss L—- is now fixing in a convent, where she has been entered some time. This has been a much more difficult point than you could have imagined, and we have, I find, been extremely fortunate. She has been ill, but is now recovered; this, too, has delayed me. We would have wrote, but have been kept in the most tormenting expectation, from day to day, of receiving your letters; but as everything is now so happily settled here, I will delay no longer giving you that information, though probably I shall set out for England without knowing a syllable of what has happened with you. All is well, I hope; and I hope, too, that though you may have been ignorant, for some time, of our proceedings, you never could have been uneasy lest anything should tempt me to depart, even in a thought, from the honor and consistency which engaged me at first. I wrote to M—- [Footnote: Mathews] above a week ago, which, I think, was necessary and right. I hope he has acted the one proper part which was left him; and, to speak from my feelings, I cannot but say that I shall be very happy to find no further disagreeable consequence pursuing him; for, as Brutus says of Caesar, &c.—if I delay one moment longer, I lose the post.
"I have writ now, too, to Mr. Adams, and should apologize to you for having writ to him first, and lost my time for you. Love to my sisters, Miss L—- to all.
"Ever, Charles, your affect. Brother,
"R. B. SHERIDAN.
"I need not tell you that we altered quite our route."
The illness of Miss Linley, to which he alludes, and which had been occasioned by fatigue and agitation of mind, came on some days after her retirement to the convent; but an English physician, Dr. Dolman, of York, who happened to be resident at Lisle at the time, was called in to attend her; and in order that she might be more directly under his care, he and Mrs. Dolman invited her to their house, where she was found by Mr. Linley, on his arrival in pursuit of her. After a few words of private explanation from Sheridan, which had the effect of reconciling him to his truant daughter, Mr. Linley insisted upon her returning with him immediately to England, in order to fulfil some engagements which he had entered into on her account; and a promise being given that, as soon as these engagements were accomplished, she should be allowed to resume her plan of retirement at Lisle, the whole party set off amicably together for England.
On the first discovery of the elopement, the landlord of the house in which the Sheridans resided had, from a feeling of pity for the situation of the young ladies,—now left without the protection of either father or brother,—gone off, at break of day, to the retreat of Charles Sheridan, and informed him of the event which had just occurred. Poor Charles, wholly ignorant till then of his brother's attachment to Miss Linley, felt all that a man may be supposed to feel, who had but too much reason to think himself betrayed, as well as disappointed. He hastened to Bath, where he found a still more furious lover, Mr. Mathews, inquiring at the house every particular of the affair, and almost avowing, in the impotence of his rage, the unprincipled design which this summary step had frustrated. In the course of their conversation, Charles Sheridan let fall some unguarded expressions of anger against his brother, which this gentleman, who seems to have been eminently qualified for a certain line of characters indispensable in all romances, treasured up in his memory, and, as it will appear, afterwards availed himself of them. For the four or five weeks during which the young couple were absent, he never ceased to haunt the Sheridan family, with inquiries, rumors, and other disturbing visitations; and, at length, urged on by the restlessness of revenge, inserted the following violent advertisement in the Bath Chronicle:
"Wednesday, April 8th, 1772.
"Mr. Richard S—- having attempted, in a letter left behind him for that purpose, to account for his scandalous method of running away from this place, by insinuations derogating from my character, and that of a young lady, innocent as far as relates to me, or my knowledge; since which he has neither taken any notice of letters, or even informed his own family of the place where he has hid himself; I can no longer think he deserves the treatment of a gentleman, and therefore shall trouble myself no further about him than, in this public method, to post him as a L—-, and a treacherous S—-.