"MY DEAR SIR,
"July 31.
"The caution you recommend proceeds from that attentive kindness which Hester always receives from you, and upon which I place the greatest reliance for her safety. I so entirely agree with your apprehensions on the subject, that I think it was very giddy in me not to have been struck with them when she first mentioned having slept with her friend. Nothing can abate my love for her; and the manner in which you apply the interest you take in her happiness, and direct the influence you possess in her mind, render you, beyond comparison, the person I feel most obliged to upon earth. I take this opportunity of saying this upon paper, because it is a subject on which I always find it difficult to speak.
"With respect to that part of your note in which you express such friendly partiality, as to my parliamentary conduct, I need not add that there is no man whose good opinion can be more flattering to me.
"I am ever, my dear Bain,
"Your sincere and obliged
"R. B. SHERIDAN.">[—thought it right to communicate to her the apprehensions that he felt. From that moment, her attentions to the sufferer never ceased day or night; and, though drooping herself with an illness that did not leave her long behind him, she watched over his every word and wish, with unremitting anxiety, to the last.
Connected, no doubt, with the disorganization of his stomach, was an abscess, from which, though distressingly situated, he does not appear to have suffered much pain. In the spring of this year, however, he was obliged to confine himself, almost entirely, to his bed. Being expected to attend the St. Patrick's Dinner, on the 17th of March, he wrote a letter to the Duke of Kent, who was President, alleging severe indisposition as the cause of his absence. The contents of this letter were communicated to the company, and produced, as appears by the following note from the Duke of Kent, a strong sensation:—
Kensington Palace, March 27, 1816.