Page:Jane Austen (Sarah Fanny Malden 1889).djvu/210

 and this came upon her when she was quite unfit for any fresh trial. Her health and spirits, which were already much weakened, sank perceptibly, and though she was anything but nervous about herself, and seldom mentioned her own health in her letters, she was evidently very far from well. In 1816 one of her nieces had written to her with earnest inquiries after her health, in answer to which Jane replies, "Many thanks for your kind care of my health. I certainly have not been well for many weeks, and about a week ago I was very poorly. I have had a good deal of fever at times and indifferent nights; but I am considerably better now, and am recovering my looks a little, which have been bad enough—black and white and every wrong colour. I must not depend upon being ever very blooming again. Sickness is a dangerous indulgence at my time of life." In the same making-the-best-of-it spirit, she wrote about this time to her brother Charles: "I live upstairs for the present, and am coddled. I am the only one of the party who has been so silly, but a weak body must excuse weak nerves."

Increasing discomfort soon convinced her that she was not as near recovery as she had hoped, and though she was so cheerful before her family that they could not tell whether she were alarmed or not, before others she sometimes allowed herself to relax in this watchful self-control. While staying with some old friends in scenes that were very familiar to her, they were struck by the way in which she spoke and acted as though she never expected to be there again, and the visible failure in her health greatly alarmed them. Her letters, too, became sadder in tone, and in one of them the depression was so evident that she pulls