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in the words, I fancy they were troublesome to pronounce.
    Meanwhile the dinner was proceeding around us—soup, cutlets, a beefsteak, none of which was sufficient to distract the eye from the curious intelligence at my side. As the meal continued, Mrs. Ireland’s behaviour became more singular still. While the servants were clearing the savoury from the table I observed her carefully decant the contents of a saltcellar upon the tablecloth. This task accomplished, she availed herself of a half-empty glass that lay nearby and, with infinite careand solicitude, began to drip claret wine upon the salt. All this with a look of such stealth—cunning, rapt introspection—as to suggest an animal bent on evading capture. Fascinated, and somehow liking her for this absorption, I enquired again, what was she doing? To be sure, she replied, was it not well known that salt was a sovereign remedy for spilled wine? And would not the servants thank her for it in the morning?
    I had hoped for further converse but, on retiring with the other ladies, I noticed that she was gone. Indeed we had not been a moment over our negus before Mr. Ireland appeared to announce that his wife was indisposed and had been conducted to bed by her maid &c. I will confess that I missed her presence in that little room—talk all of the Queen, the Duchess of A——’s ball—would have liked her there, if only to drip claret onto the tablecloth, and that the rest of the evening had no pleasure for me. Reflecting on these incidents, I felt that I had observed a rare and generous spirit, yet struggling to convey some great distress of which it was perhaps only partly aware: the effect disturbing to the mind, a life wreathed in shadow breaking out now and again in hard, bitter laughter. George, to whom I explained something of this, unhappy, said that Mrs. Ireland’s afflictions were well known, her husband near beside himself with anxiety. All this, I found, worked on me very curiously—the silent woman in her house of dull old furniture and serried mirrors—to the point where, the following day, I determined to call, neglected an article I had promised to Mr. Chapman and took an omnibus to the further end of the Buckingham Palace Road. Alas, it was a fool’s errand. The house seemed quiet, the blinds drawn down, with only a little servant girl in a creased mob cap to tell me that “Master and Missus” had gone away that morning to the country, although the number of coats, hats, etc., upon the hallway hooks suggested that, if this were the case, they had taken very little of their clothing with them. And so I took my leave and walked for a while in the Square’s gardens, past the nursery maids and their carriages and the small boys with their hoops, musing on the peculiar circumstances to which I had been witness, casting an occasional glance at the house, from whose upper window, I am tolerably certain at one point, a woman’s face stared balefully down.
     
J AS. D IXEY, E SQ.
    Easton Hall
    Near Watton
    Norfolk
    My dear Dixey,
    Although our acquaintance is not so very intimate, yet you are the man that my father always said that he respected most and have ever been a friend to me. Be assured, then, that I should not have cared to burden you with this letter were it not for the extremity in which I have been plunged. In truth I have been so sorely tested this last month and more that I have not known which way to turn. You will perhaps more fully comprehend the pain of these afflictions if I say at the outset that not one particle of what follows is exaggerated, coloured or in any way distorted in the telling.
    You will have heard—who has not?—of our troubles. It was ever the case that when a man stands well before the world, the world is silent, yet, should adversity strike, the air is filled with clamorous voices. Thinking that sea and country air might be beneficial, I proposed a tour of the southern counties of Ireland. (We had property there