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Rh source of pride to her, but her happiness is short-lived. The following year, 1838, she begins to show signs of a disease affecting the chest. Late in the summer of that year he takes her to Simla; then a Himaláyan station beginning to be established. It is here that he first perceives the peril which threatens to leave their young family motherless.

The following spring, 1839, he decides to send her home, and the children with her. He obtains leave from the Agra Government to go with them as far as Calcutta, where they are to meet his sister Eliza and her husband Major Hutchinson of the Bengal Engineers. Thence they are to proceed all together in an Indiaman round the Cape of Good Hope to England. From Agra he arranges a voyage, tedious but suitably calm for his sick wife, down the Ganges in a spacious boat. She whiles away the hours by reading the manuscript book with its devotional passages already mentioned. Arriving at Calcutta and meeting the Hutchinsons, who afford the best of escort for the voyage, she might it was hoped proceed, and he might return to Agra as his leave would soon expire. But she is so prostrated that he cannot bear to let her go on without him. Therefore he obtains leave to proceed with the ship so far as the Cape of Good Hope, thence to return to Calcutta, for that was the then limit of the East India Company's authority in respect of leave to its officers. He takes this opportunity in the hope that she will improve before reaching the Cape. Arriving there, however, he sees her no