day, if I can find a moment's time. If you can devise any quicker mode of accomplishing your amiable purpose, rely upon my paying the £80 within the next six months. For God's sake do not let it slip through. If I knew how to send the money from here, I would do it this instant; but, considering the delay of distance, and the caprice of wind and sea, it will be more expeditiously done by Mr. Siddons. God bless and restore you to perfect health and tranquillity."
We can read between the lines of this letter, as we know that about this time she received a pressing request from her husband for money to fit out their son George for India, and to pay debts incurred on the decoration of the house in Great Marlborough Street, suggesting that in consequence she had better accept an engagement in Liverpool. She preferred, however, though harassed by disagreements with Jones the manager, to remain in Dublin. A report was circulated, as on the occasion of her first visit to Ireland, that she had refused to play for the benefit of the Lying-in Hospital, a charity much patronised by the Dublin ladies. She indignantly refuted this accusation, ending with words that show her state of mental suffering:—
"It is hard to bear at one and the same time the pressure of domestic sorrow, the anxiety of business, and the necessity of healing a wounded reputation; but such is the rude enforcement of the time, and I must sustain it as I am enabled by that Power who tempers the wind to the shorn lamb."
Her son George came and spent a fortnight with her before his departure for India, and the news from home concerning her daughter still seemed good. Like a thunderbolt, therefore, from a summer sky,
