How long we're to stay here in this misery, I can't guess, and K. I.'s convalescence may be, the doctor thinks, a matter of months; and even then, Molly, who knows in what state he 'll come out of it! Nobody can tell if we won't be obliged to take what they call a Confession of Lunacy against him, and make him allow that he's mad and unfit to manage his affairs. If it was the will of Providence, I 'd just as soon be a widow at once; for, after all, it's uncertainty that tries the spirits and destroys the constitution worse than any other affliction. Indeed, till yesterday afternoon, we all thought he was going off in a placid sleep; but he opened one eye a little, and bade Cary draw the window-curtain, that he might look out. He stared for a while at the water coming up to the steps of the door, and almost entirely round the house, and he gave a little smile. "What's he thinking of?" said I, in a whisper; but he heard me at once, and said, "I 'll tell you, Jemi, what it was. I was thinking this was an elegant place against the bailiffs." From that moment I saw that the raving had left him, and he was quite himself again. Now, my dear Molly, you have a true account of the life we lead, and don't you pity us? If your heart does not bleed for me this minute, I don't know you. Write to me soon, and send me the Limerick papers, that has all the news about the Exhibition in Dublin. By all accounts it's doing wonderfully well, and I often wish I could see it. Cary has just come down to take her half-hour's walk on the terrace,--for K. I. makes her do that every evening, though he never thinks of any of the rest of us,--and I must go and take her place; so I write myself Yours in haste, but in sorrow, Jemima Dodd LETTER XI. MISS MARY ANNE DODD TO MISS DOOLAN, OF BALLYDOOLAN Villa della Fontana, Como. Forget thee! No, dearest Kitty. But how could such cruel words have ever escaped your pen? To cease to retain you in memory would be to avow an oblivion of childhood's joys, and of my youth's fondest recollections; of those first expansions of the heart, when, "fold after fold to the fainting air," the petals of my young existence opened one by one before you; when my shadowy fancies grew into bright realities, and the dream-world assumed all the lights and, alas! all the shadows of the actual. The fact was, dearest, papa was very, very ill; I may, indeed, say so dangerously, that at one time our greatest fears were excited for his state; nor was it till within a few days back that I could really throw off all apprehension and revel in that security enjoyed by the others. He is now up for some hours every day, and able to take light sustenance, and even to participate a little in social intercourse, which of course we are most careful to moderate, with every regard to his weak state; but his convalescence makes progress every hour, and already he begins to talk and laugh, and look somewhat like himself.