I have such miserable letters from my poor dear Pamela. It breaks one’s heart to read them, and yet she is very good. She wrote to tell me of Lucy’s death _immediately_ after it occurred, and wrote in the greatest agony, but even then resigned, at least trying to be so, and thinking much of the life of trouble which poor Lucy would have had before her. Pamela said, “Think of her Aunt, think of her poor husband, think of all but _her_, for she was miserable and it was in mercy that God took her.” And I believe her death to have been in fact occasioned by the state of excitement and anxiety in which she had lived since her marriage; and she had little chance, with her strong feelings and the peculiar circumstances of her situation, of anything but an increase of anxiety. Pamela writes me word to-day that her four servants--all she keeps--are in the scarlet fever, and her eldest little girl had just begun with it, and she has had, ever since Lucy’s death, a sort of nervous pain in her throat that prevents her swallowing anything but liquids, and is grown very weak. I am telling you a long story, but I think you are interested about her, and it is such a melancholy situation that I can think of nothing else. To be sure, I have, as it is, a great many more blessings than I deserve; but it is hard that the want of a little foolish money should keep me from the best friend I have in the world at the only time in which I could be of use to her. However, if it had been possible, George would have taken me to her, and there is no use in murmuring at impossibilities. God knows I can enter into her feelings as a sister; and now that she has so much sickness in her home, it is cruel to leave her with a half-broken heart to struggle through it by herself. And yet I do not see how it is to be managed. Pamela writes but little of the scenes she has been through. She says she cannot endure to express her feelings in writing, though she thinks she would be better if she could talk it over. Captain Lyon was coming home in January, but perhaps this will prevent him. Poor creature! What an arrival it will be if he has set off before this news reaches him.