any day
after the 16th, when they expect to come to town; but I have declined
the invitation, because I do not wish to give up dining with my brother
Henry, who comes to me every day when I don't act....

It seems strange that you should ask me if uncertainty, torments me. It
torments me SO that I never endure it, even when the only escape from it
is by some conclusion that I know to be rash and ill-advised.

"The woman who deliberates," says the saying, "is lost." My loss has
been, and ever will be, through precipitation, not deliberation. To
choose anything, a gown even, is a martyrdom to me, and, unlike the
generality of my sex, I generally go into a shop, wishing to look at
nothing, and knowing only the precise color, material, and quantity of
the stuff I mean to purchase; for if I were to leave myself the smallest
discretion--option, we will say (I can hardly leave myself what I
haven't got)--I should infallibly buy something revoltingly ugly, out of
mere impatience of the investigation and deliberation necessary to get
something that pleased me. It is to save myself from the trouble of
choice that I have made so many arbitrary and, to your thinking, absurd
rules about the details of my daily life; but they spare me indecision
about trifles, and I find it, therefore, comfortable to follow them.

I am at Morrison's hotel; the rooms are clean, comfortable, and
cheerful, but the fare is bad and far from abundant; but if the charges
are meagre in proportion, I shall be satisfied, if not with food, at
least with equity.

My friend Arthur Malkin is here, as secretary to one of the members of
the committee sent out from England to organize relief for your wretched
countrymen. He is good and clever, and it is a great pleasure to me to
have him here. I am sorry Mr. Labouchere [afterwards Lord Taunton] is
away in Parliament. I wished particularly to have met him.

Lord Bessborough was at the play last night, and sent, after it was
over, to invite me to the St. Patrick's ball on Wednesday; but I have
declined, as I do not feel at all well enough for dissipations that
would bore as well as tire me. I am told he means to ask me to dine at
the Castle, which I rather dread, as it is not, I believe, allowable to
refuse a representative of majesty; but I dread the exertion and the
tedium of the thing, and have a particular dislike to the notion of
meeting ----....

Good-bye, my dear.

Ever you