My own grief is composed in the
satisfaction I shall take, and the assurance that your sainted
mother is where the wicked cease from troubling.
"The financial arrangements of my dear sister were of the most
conservative and high-toned character, as was to have been expected
of her.
"You may be desirous, my outraged, but, I hope, still _spirited_,
idol, to hear the particulars of Lucy's death. She did not reach
Cambridge till near midnight, having made the long journey from
Princess Anne without fitting companions, and, in the excited state
of her feelings, after she left Vienna in the evening, a depression
of the spirits, accompanied by a fluttering of the heart, came on,
and rapidly increased, and, by the time she arrived at our
relatives', she was nearly dead with nervous apprehension and
weakness. On seeing me, she revived sufficiently to make her will
in the most _sisterly_ and conservative manner.
"A physician was procured, but he pronounced her system so
debilitated and detoned as hardly probable to outride the shock,
the nervous centres being depressed and atrophy setting in.
"She talked incessantly about the _Entailed Hat_, and said it was a
permanent shadow and weight upon your heart, and made me promise to
_mash_ it, if it could conservatively be done.
"I read to my dear sister from _the Book of Books_, and tried to
compose her feelings, but she broke out ever and anon, 'Oh, Brother
Allan! to think I have raised children to be bought and sold, and
married to foresters and trash.
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