Page:Mrs. Siddons (IA mrssiddons00kennrich).pdf/124

112 "Mrs. Wapshawe has revived my hopes. She tells me that you will return sooner than I hoped. Now I'll begin my cottage again. It has been lying in heaps a great while, and I have shed many tears over the ruins; but we will build it up again in joy. You know the spot that I have fixed upon, and I trust I have not forgotten the plan!

"Oh! what a reward for all that I have suffered, to retire to the blessings of your society; for, indeed, my dear friends, I have paid severely for my eminence, and have smarted with the undeserved pain that should attend the guilty only; but it is the fate of office, and the rough brake that virtue must go through; and sweet, 'sweet are the uses of adversity.' I kiss the rod.

"Mrs. Wapshawe was quite delighted with Mr. Beach's picture of you; but she tells me that you wear coloured clothes and lace ruffles; and I valued my picture more, if possible, for standing the test of such a change as these (to me unusual) ornaments must necessarily make in you. I think I shall long to strip you of these trappings.

"I am so attached to the garments I have been used to see you wear, and think they harmonize so well with your face and person, that I should wish them like their dear wearer, who is without change. I am proud of your chiding, though God knows how unwillingly I would give you a moment's pain; nay, more, He knows that I neither go to bed, nor offer prayers for blessings at His hands, in which your welfare does not make an ardent petition. But why should I wound your friendly bosoms with the relation of my vexations? I knew you too well to suppose you could hear of my distresses without feeling them too poignantly.