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Rh for the future, and declared his intention of spending a part of the summer at Westbourne. She left him, therefore, comparatively free from anxiety in February 1808. Within a month of her departure, however, he was seized with a violent attack of illness, and on the 11th of March expired. She immediately threw up her engagement in Edinburgh, and left for her London home. Thence, on the 29th March 1808, she wrote to Mrs. Piozzi:—

"How unwearied is your goodness to me, my dear friend. There is something so awful in this sudden dissolution of so long a connexion, that I shall feel it longer than I shall speak of it. May I die the death of my honest, worthy husband; and may those to whom I am dear remember me when I am gone, as I remember him, forgetting and forgiving all my errors, and recollecting only my quietness of spirit and singleness of heart. Remember me to your dear Mr. Piozzi. My head is still so dull with this stunning surprise that I cannot see what I write. Adieu! dear soul; do not cease to love your friend.—S. S."

So ended the love story begun thirty-three years before.

Before the end of the year she resumed her cap and bells again, but had only acted on one or two nights at Covent Garden before it was burnt to the ground. How the fire originated is a mystery. Some said that the wadding of a gun, in the performance of Pizarro, must have lodged unperceived in the crevice of the scenery. Miss Wilkinson declared afterwards, that before the audience left the house she perceived a strong smell of fire while sitting in Mr. Kemble's box, and on her way to Mrs. Siddons's dressing-room mentioned it to some of the servants; they declared