it was a trial, but that she saw many others afflicted with
dispensations so much heavier than her own, that she was content.
To grow blind contentedly is to be very brave and good, and I
admired and loved her even more than I did before. When I came
home, I went and sat with my father. He has decided that we shall
not go to Oatlands, and I am hardly sorry for it.

_Friday, 14th._--Went over my part for to-night.... Victoire came
with me to the theater instead of Dall, whose whole time is taken
up attending on my father. The house was bad, and I thought I acted
very ill, though Victoire and John, who was in the front, said I
did not. Henry Greville was in the boxes, and to my surprise went
from them to the pit, though I ought not to have been surprised,
for, for such a fine gentleman, he is a very sensible man. Colonel
and Lady C. Cavendish were in the orchestra, and how I did wish
them further. I do so wonder, in the middle of my stage despair,
what business my drawing-room acquaintances have sitting staring at
it. My dress was beautiful. As for the audience, I do not know what
ailed them, but they seemed to have agreed together only to applaud
at the end of the scenes, so that I got no resting interruptions,
and was half dead with fatigue at the end of the play. I read
Daru's "Venice" between the scenes, and saw my father for a few
minutes after I came home.

_Thursday, 15th._--Had a delightful long letter from H----, who is
a poet without the jingle.... Another physician is to be called in
for my father. Oh, my dear father! Mr. Bartley was with him about
this horrible theater business.... My mother went in the evening
with John to hear Miss Sheriff in Polly. It is her first night in
"The Beggar's Opera," and my father wished to know how it went. I
stayed at home with poor Henry, and after tea sat with my father
till bedtime.

_Friday, 16th._--Went to the theater at eleven, and rehearsed
Isabella in the saloon, the stage being occupied with a rehearsal
of the pantomime. When my rehearsal was over, the carriage not
being come, I went down to see what they were doing. There was poor
Farleigh, nose and all (a worthy, amiable man, and excellent comic
character, with a huge excrescence of a nose), _qui se demenait_
like one frantic; huge Mr. St