Meantime, no letters came. The winds raged without, and no vessel could cross. At the end of the week the news that arrived was not satisfactory. She made up her mind to throw up her engagement at any cost, and return. She and Patty Wilkinson set out for Dublin; there they were again detained, and received no news. Nearly beside herself with anxiety, she again appealed to Mrs. Fitzhugh:— “Dublin, April 2nd, 1803. “I am perfectly astonished, my dear Friend, that I have not heard from you after begging it so earnestly. Good God! what can be the reason that intelligence must be extorted, as it were, in circumstances like mine? One would think common benevolence, setting affection quite aside, might have induced some of you to alleviate as much as possible such distress as you know I must feel. The last letter from Mr. Siddons stated that she was better. Another letter from Mr. Montgomery, at Oxford, says that George gave him the same account. Why—why am I to hear this only from a person at that distance from her, and so ill-informed as the writer must be of the state of her health? Why should not you or Mr. Siddons have told me this? I cannot account for your silence at all, for you know how to feel. I hope to sail to-night, and to reach London the third day. God knows when that will be. Oh God! what a home to return to, after all I have been doing! and what a prospect to the end of my days.” At last she was able to cross to Holyhead. At Shrewsbury she received a letter from Mr. Siddons confirming the worst accounts of Sally’s illness, but begging her to “remember the preciousness of her own life, and not to endanger it by over-rapid travelling.” As she read, Miss Wilkinson was called from the room; a messenger had arrived with the news of the girl’s death. Mrs. Siddons guessed what had happened by the expression of Miss Wilkinson’s face when she returned, and, sinking back speechless, lay for a day “cold and torpid as a stone, with scarcely a sign of life.” Her own family came forward with consolation and help. Her brother John wrote a letter, which she received at Oxford; her brother Charles came to meet her, and conducted her on her first visit to her widowed mother. Every other grief had sunk into insignificance by the side of the death of her daughter. So worn out was she with misery and overwork, that the doctors recommended the quiet and bracing air of Cheltenham. We get a glimpse of her frame of mind in a letter addressed thence to her friend Mrs. Fitzhugh in June 1803:—