To MRS. O'BEIRNE.
BLACK CASTLE, July 6, 1824.
In the little drawing-room at Black Castle, where we have been so often
happy together; in the little drawing-room to which you have so often
brought me to see my dear aunt, I now write to you, my dear friend, to
tell you how much I miss you. I feel a perpetual want of that part of my
happiness in this dear place which I owed to its neighbourhood to
another dear place to which I cannot now bear to go. Once, and but once, in the two months I have been here have I been there; when the indispensable civility of returning a formal visit required it, and then I felt it to be as much, if not more, than I was able to do, with the composure I felt to be proper. The sitting in that red drawing-room and missing everything I had so loved—the saloon, the lawn—I really could not speak, and heartily glad I was when I got away.
My plans of going to England this summer have been all broken up: you
know how, as you have heard of the death of my dear sister Anna, at Florence; the account of her loss reached me just when I was joyfully expecting an answer to a letter full of projects which she never lived to read. GOD'S will be done. We expect my nieces, Anna and Mary, at Edgeworthstown as soon as they return from Italy.