With advancing spring the cloud of depression was dispelled. She became more cheerful, began to talk of a return to London, and to look forward to her life there. The return journey was undertaken in the second week in June. It was safely accomplished, though at the cost of very great weariness and exhaustion. When she reached Stanhope Place and had been carried to her room, she said, "No more journeys for me." This was indeed her last journey, for though in 1877 she had such a longing for fresh country air that there was a consultation, and her physicians sanctioned removal, yet when the time came her heart failed, and she remained at home. On her return from Torquay she went into Hyde Park about half a dozen times in an invalid chair, but after October 1874 she left the house no more. She was, however, still able for a time to be dressed, to sit up for an hour or two, and to be carried up and down stairs. As the winter advanced a sitting-room was arranged on the same floor as her bedroom, and then she came downstairs daily no more. In spite of all precautions against cold she had a severe attack of bronchitis in 1875, and was attended by Dr. Hawkesley, whom she knew and liked as a fellow-worker on the Council of the Normal College for the Blind. He was struck by the manner in which she threw off the attack. "She is doing so gallantly," he said. But she did not regain the strength lost during this illness, and resumed life after every access of sorrow and suffering on a lower level, as it were, and with diminished vital powers. After the spring of 1875 she was not dressed again, and never sat up. Recumbent on one of Alderman's couches, in a pretty dressing-gown, with soft warm shawls, and lace, and bright colour, such as she loved, about her, she spent her good days. On the bad ones she was not lifted from her bed. She had indeed become like a train that is left upon a siding, and all her busy life was hushed and silent. When the summer came, and her rooms were to be repapered and painted, she was carried downstairs. The drawing-rooms were specially prepared as her bed and sitting-rooms, and she would stay in these her "country quarters" for six weeks or two months. After that she was taken upstairs in the same way for the autumn, winter, and spring. This removal required great care and very skilful management, as the couch on which she reclined had to be lifted over the bannisters, and any jerk or unexpected movement caused both pain and apprehension. A fresh sorrow awaited her. In 1876 Charlotte Gadney, her faithful and affectionate attendant, had a paralytic seizure, and it was necessary for the sake both of mistress and maid that they should part. Bessie could not at first acquiesce in separation; she reproached herself as the cause of Charlotte's illness, and could not rest until she was informed of all the minutest details connected with her.