For my own part, Your Lordship, I looked on the Duke’s letter of congratulations as neither more nor less than my poor husband’s death-warrant. Indeed he was so dreadfully alarmed himself, as to be quite distressing to witness. He did nothing, the whole afternoon, but walk up and down the room, shaking his head at himself in the looking-glass, or looking up at the ceiling, and muttering, as if he was already exploding sky high along with the Mills. But a refusal was out of the question, as it would have afforded his Grace too good an excuse for neglecting our interests for the future. To aggravate the case, the very day after our taking possession, there was what is called a blow at the works, and though so trifling as only to carry a roof off a shed, it struck a cord on Mr. D.’s nerves that has never done vibrating ever since. I do not exaggerate to say, that if he had been struck with the palsy and St. Vitus, both at once, he could not have showed more corporeal agitation. He trembled in every limb like an aspen tree; while his eyes rolled, and his head went from side to side, like the China Mandarin’s; besides scouring up and down stairs, and rushing out of doors and in again, and trying all the chairs but could not sit any where, and stamping, and muttering, and dancing about, till I really expected he would scramble up the walls of the room, and fly across the ceiling, like our tortoiseshell cat in her fits. If I lived to Methusalem, Your Lordship, I should never forget it! Unluckily, being new to his office, a mistaken notion of duty possessed him that he ought not to quit the spot; indeed he solemnly declared, that if a blow was to take place in his absence, he would rather commit his own suicide than face the report of it in the newspapers, which had already indulged in some seditious sneers at his appointment. All that could be done, therefore, was to pack off Lucy, and Emily and Eliza, on week’s visits among friends; myself remaining behind, as a wife’s proper post, near my poor husband; but on the discomfortable condition of keeping under ground in the cellar, because gunpowder in convulsions always blasts upwards. What my feelings were, as we are troubled with rats, Your Lordship may suppose; particularly when Mr. D. was officially called upon to inspect the damage; and never shall I forget his gashly appearance when he returned from his awful task! He was literally as white as a sheet; and totally incapable to get out a word, till he had swallowed three whole glasses of brandy! That settled his reason,--but it was only to tell me that lie had scraped and grazed the skin off every nubble of his back-bone, by a bad fall from a ladder, which he had attempted to come down in wooden safety shoes. Such, Your Lordship, was our miserable day; and it brought as wretched a night. Bed would not be heard of--and we set up in two easy chairs, shuddering with fright and cold, being December, and every door and window thrown wide