with letters every week till you write to me, if you are not well, in
the sincere wish to arouse you and draw your thoughts from what may be
unpleasing subjects: and if you are idle, to spur you to your task.
Adieu, my dearest friend.

Your ever affectionate EMMELINE.

_From Mary Greville to Emmeline Hamilton_.

Greville Manor, March 13.

How can I thank you sufficiently, my dearest Emmeline, for the
affectionate letters which I have received so regularly the last month.
I am still so weak that much writing is forbidden me, and therefore to
reply to them all as my affection dictates is impossible. But I know
your kind heart, my Emmeline; I know it will be satisfied, when I say
your letters have indeed cheered my couch of suffering; have indeed
succeeded not only in changing _my_ thoughts from the subject that
perhaps too much engrosses them, but sometimes even my poor mother's.
Your first long letter, dated January, you tell me you wrote to let me
know you as you are, that all your faults may be laid bare to my
inspection; and what is to be the consequence--that you are, as you said
you would be, lowered in my estimation? no, dear and candid girl, you
are not, and while you retain such ingenuousness of disposition, you
never can be. Wrong you certainly were to encourage such despondency,
when so very many blessings were around you; but when once you become
sensible of an error, it is already with you corrected. Mamma has, I
know, some weeks ago, written to Mrs. Hamilton, to tell her Greville
Manor is to be sold. We shall never return to it again; the haunts I so
dearly loved, the scenes in which I have spent so many happy hours, all
will pass into the hands of strangers,--it will be no longer our own; we
shall be no longer together, as for so many years we have been. In
changing my residence thus, I feel as if every tie I loved was torn
asunder.

* * * * *

I thought I could have written calmly on this subject, my Emmeline, but
I believed myself stronger, both in mind and body, than I am. I have
been very ill, and therefore let that be my excuse. Plead for me with
your mother, Emmeline; tell her she knows not how I struggle to conceal
every pang from the watchful eyes of that mother who has hung over my
couch, with an agony that has told me plainer than words I am indeed her
only joy on earth. My spirit has been so tortured the three months of my
stern father's residence at home,