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210 sense of her loss would come back, carrying away all artificial barriers of restraint.

"If he thinks himself unfortunate," she wrote of a friend, "let him look on me and be silent—'the inscrutable ways of Providence.' Two lovely creatures gone, and another is just arrived from school with all the dazzling frightful sort of beauty that irradiated the countenance of Maria, and makes me shudder when I look at her. I feel myself like poor Niobe grasping to her bosom the last and youngest of her children; and, like her, look every moment for the vengeful arrow of destruction. Alas! my dear Friend, can it be wondered at that I long for the land where they are gone to prepare their mother's place? What have I here? Yet here, even here, I could be content to linger still in peace and calmness—content is all I wish. But I must again enter into the bustle of the world; for though fame and fortune have given me all I wish, yet while my presence and my exertions here may be useful to others, I do not think myself at liberty to give myself up to my own selfish gratification. The second great commandment is 'Love thy neighbour as thyself,' and in this way I shall most probably best make my way to Heaven."

How inscrutable, indeed, are the ways of Providence. Sally was her eldest daughter and her dearest child. She had been born two months before that terrible period of probation and failure at Drury Lane. Hers were the baby fingers, hers the baby voice, that had coaxed the poor young mother back to resignation and courage. She was twenty-seven when she was taken, and had ever been the sunshine of the home. Yes, she was the dearest. Strange that, deaf to our anguish and suffering, those are so often they who are