I have seen my friends depart from this port. The ship sailed on Sunday evening. Sinclair will write to me immediately on reaching Jamaica.--My father will expect to hear something of my health and pursuits. I have no inducements to wish the former of these articles better than it is: the latter are such as will not disgrace him or myself. To any nearer inquiry I cannot reply to his satisfaction, without deviating from that sincerity and truth, which he has taught me to respect even with more veneration than himself. I wish I were able to deceive myself in regard to my dear friend Lord William. Alas, Lucy, he must die! Nothing can save him from the ravages of the cruel though insidious destroyer. He knows this; and it is his concealed wish to die any where rather than at home. "My absence," said he to me the other evening, "has prepared my mother for the more final separation. She will not see my last struggle, nor hear my last sigh. Her home will not be a perpetual remembrance of my funeral obsequies. I will winter at the Madeiras, Hardcastle, in order to be more remote from her." Poor fellow! amiable as thou art, what can lessen the sorrow which thou art doomed to inflict, long before that period, on all who know thee? I think he cannot live two months! Yours, affectionately, Horace Hardcastle. * * * * * Here also is found a break of a few weeks in the correspondence between the friends. Letters, however, regularly passed from and to Lisbon, and the animated Miss Cowley, with renewed health and gaiety, thus continues her correspondence to Heathcot. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: Jackass.] [Footnote 2: A convent near Lisbon, so called from being built of the Cork-tree.] CHAP. X. LETTER XXVII. _Miss Cowley to Miss Hardcastle._ December the 29th.