On the very first day I received permission to go out, while my carriage was waiting at the door, I was shocked by a most melancholy scene. The poor young creature from St. George's Hospital, having resisted the persuasions and threats of the matrons, declaring that she would see me before she died, drove up to my door in a hackney-coach literally in the agonies of death! My landlord, who had just called for his rent, hearing from my servants that a dying woman was come to me from the hospital, declared that she should not enter his house. What was to be done? We were all women and could not contend. My footman would have had her brought in by force; but force was the very thing in which the most particlerst man as is was most deficient. The poor creature held out her hands, entreating me for the love of God not to send her away from me in her last moments. The scene was indeed disgraceful to humanity and I was very much affected by it; but how could I help it? The landlord insisted she should not come in. There was no time to be lost, she must go to the workhouse.
"We will lose no time in contention with this unfeeling wretch," said I, "but I will go with you to the workhouse, and nurse you."
"God bless you! God bless you!" exclaimed the poor dying creature, faintly. "I am not afraid of dying, while you are with me."
I will not dwell on a scene, which even at this distant period I cannot remember without shuddering. In less than an hour after my poor protégée was placed on a miserable couch in Marylebone workhouse, she expired in my arms, earnestly and piously recommending her soul to God....
My health suffered much from this shock, and it was more than a week after the poor girl's death before I could again venture to leave the house. My sister Fanny at last prevailed on me to go and pass the day with her. There I met Julia, who had forgotten her constant swain, Colonel Cotton, though he still appeared to adore her. She had fallen madly in love with Sir Harry Mildmay, who, for a short time, seemed to return her passion and was really attentive to her, till somebody at Melton Mowbray asked him one day what the deuce he was doing with an old woman who might be his mother! All the love Mildmay ever felt for any daughter of Eve originated in vanity, and was fed and nourished by vanity, therefore, I need not add, that he cut Julia from that hour, and from that hour Julia's passion for him regularly increased; although it was unmixed or unpurified by the least atom of affection.