olcroft's. I think you
right in the principle, but a little wrong in the present
application.

When I lived alone, I always dined on a Sunday with company, in the
evening, if not at dinner, at St. P.[aul's with Johnson],
generally also of a Tuesday, and some other day at Fuseli's.

I like to see new faces as a study, and since my return from
Norway, or rather since I have accepted of invitations, I have
dined every third Sunday at Twiss's, nay, oftener, for they sent
for me when they had any extraordinary company. I was glad to go,
because my lodging was noisy of a Sunday, and Mr. S.'s house and
spirits were so altered, that my visits depressed him instead of
exhilarating me.

I am, then, you perceive, thrown out of my track, and have not
traced another. But so far from wishing to obtrude on yours, I had
written to Mrs. Jackson, and mentioned Sunday, and am now sorry
that I did not fix on to-day as one of the days for sitting for my
picture.

To Mr. Johnson I would go without ceremony, but it is not
convenient for me at present to make haphazard visits.

Should Carlisle chance to call on you this morning, send him to me,
but by himself, for he often has a companion with him, which would
defeat my purpose.

The second note is even more friendly:--

_Monday morning_, July 3, 1797.

Mrs. Reveley can have no doubt about to-day, so we are to stay at
home. I have a design upon you this evening to keep you quite to
myself--I hope nobody will call!--and make you read the play.

I was thinking of a favorite song of my poor friend Fanny's: "In a
vacant rainy day, you shall be wholly mine," etc.

Unless the weather prevents you from taking your accustomed walk,
call on me this morning, for I have something to say to you.

But a short period of happiness now remained to them. Mary expected to be
confined about the end of August, and she awaited that event with no
misgivings. She had been perfectly strong and well when Fanny was born.
She considered women's illness on such occasions due much more to
imaginative than to physical causes, and her health through the past few
months had been, save for one or two trifling ailments, uncommonly good.
There was really no reason for her to fear the consequences. Both she and
Godwin looked forward with pleasure to the arrival of th