If you knew how welcome your letters are, you would write very often.

Your letters, and the French newspapers, are the only messengers that come to me from the outer world beyond our moors; and very welcome messengers they are." One of her daily employments was to read to her father, and it required a little gentle diplomacy on her part to effect this duty; for there were times when the offer of another to do what he had been so long accustomed to do for himself, only reminded him too painfully of the deprivation under which he was suffering.

And, in secret, she, too, dreaded a similar loss for herself.

Long-continued ill health, a deranged condition of the liver, her close application to minute drawing and writing in her younger days, her now habitual sleeplessness at nights, the many bitter noiseless tears she had shed over Branwell's mysterious and distressing conduct--all these causes were telling on her poor eyes; and about this time she thus writes to M.Heger:-- "Il n'y a rien que je crains comme le desoeuvrement, l'inertie, la lethargie des facultes.

Quand le corps est paresseux l'esprit souffre cruellement; je ne connaitrais pas cette lethargie, si je pouvais ecrire.