Page:Life of Octavia Hill as told in her letters.djvu/379

 found Fawcett quite opposed to the Bill. She talked with him at dinner and afterwards, and I believe quite altered his views. In wishing her good-bye he said he owed to her a most interesting and delightful evening, and he was glad to have met her. He apologised to Lady Monteagle for having engrossed the conversation, and kept it on this topic; he hoped to meet her again, and not be so absorbed.

Saturday (1877).

A change has come o'er the spirit of our dream. Octa has seen Dr. Hughlings Jackson three times; and Lady Ducie has seen him once; and he insists, in a way we cannot gainsay, that Octa shall at once cease work. She is going abroad, but we don't yet know where—and is organising work in the houses to go on without her;—all the other work must of course take its chance in other hands, those in which it now is.

Dr. H. Jackson thinks she will ultimately quite recover, and says she must have immense strength to have gone on all these months.

December 7th, 1877.

Believe me the work you have done for me in B. Court during the past year has been the greatest consolation to me. It often sits heavily on my heart to think how much real deep personal work goes undone in the courts, while I am called away, or which I am not fitted to do; and, when I see that you and such as you are taking it up, I feel so thankful. I know that that is the work which is of deep and true value.