Another person to whom her accounts of the first scenes of the Great Trial had been specially welcome was now soon to be lost to her. On the 15th of April, 1788, not long after the above events, died Mrs. Delany. Her death was a serious blow to Fanny, who had resorted to her freely for sympathy when things went wrong either with the Senior Keeper, or in the “nice conduct” of the Equerries’ tea-table. In the July following, the King, whose health had hitherto been of the best, showed the first indications of that malady which was afterwards to be of so serious a character. As a consequence, it was decided that, in company with the Queen and the three elder Princesses, he should go to Cheltenham to drink the waters,—carrying with him the Royal household in concentrated form. Fanny and Miss Planta were of the party; Colonel Gwyn was the Equerry in Waiting; and Colonel Digby attended in his capacity of Queen’s Vice-Chamberlain. They were domiciled at Fauconberg Hall (Bay’s Hill Lodge), which was charmingly situated, but ridiculously restricted in point of accommodation. At Cheltenham, King George repeated his usual simple life, promenading daily in the Walks to the delight of the lieges; and from time to time making flying visits in the neighbourhood from which Miss Planta and Miss Burney were, of necessity, excluded. One result of these proceedings was to throw Miss Burney very much into the society of Colonel Digby, now a recently bereft and melancholy widower with a young family. The Queen’s Vice-Chamberlain was ten years older than Miss Burney; and rumour was already connecting his name with that of his eventual second wife, Miss Charlotte Gunning, a pretty Maid of Honour, who figures in the _Diary_ as “Miss Fuzelier,” and was the eldest daughter of a baronet. Meanwhile, in the contracted limits of Bay’s Hill Lodge, both Colonel Digby and Miss Burney—like fellow-sufferers upon a raft—seem to have discovered that they had much in common. They exchanged ideas upon many subjects, staidly discussing religion and the affections, and particularly the second volume of a work with the “injudicious” title of _Original Love Letters_.[64] Fanny was admittedly much “flattered” by the Colonel’s attraction to her little parlour; and in her _Diary_ the record of this pleasant oasis in her pilgrimage has all the aspect of a decorous sentimental idyll. Unhappily, practical confirmation of the doleful Colonel’s standing topic—“the assured misery of all stations and all seasons in this vain and restless world”—arrived suddenly with a fit of the gout. This effectually put a stop to any further study of Akenside’s _Odes_ and Falconer’s _Shipwreck_; and on the 8th of August Colonel Digby was forced to obtain sick leave, and departed. Almost immediately afterwards, and not entirely without Fanny’s good offices,—he was appointed to the vacant Mastership of St. Catherine’s Hospital, a sinecure in the Queen’s gift. With this, what Fanny styles, in a double sense, “the Cheltenham episode” drew to an end; and the Royal Household went back to the “set, gray life” of old. To make matters worse, before a few weeks were over, the King was again indisposed. In October those about him were vaguely uneasy; and in the night of the 20th, he was alarmingly ill. This attack however passed off; and on the 25th the Court moved from Kew to Windsor. On that day Miss Burney had “a sort of conference” with the King, which she explains to mean that she “was the object to whom he spoke.” Though he was as gracious and kind as usual, she was shocked at the hoarseness, volubility, and even vehemence of his speech. The next day she met him again in the passage from the Queen’s room. “He stopped me, and conversed upon his health near half an hour, still with that extreme quickness of speech and manner that belongs to fever; and he hardly sleeps, he tells me, one minute all night; indeed, if he recovers not his rest, a most delirious fever seems to threaten him. He is all agitation, all emotion, yet all benevolence and goodness, even to a degree that makes it touching to hear him speak. He assures everybody of his health; he seems only fearful to give uneasiness to others, yet certainly he is better than last night. Nobody speaks of his illness, nor what they think of it.”