The day after this letter was written she saw Lord John again.  “He called and had a long conversation with Mama....  Mama liked him better than ever.”

    Lady Minto to Lady Mary Abercromby

    ADMIRALTY, March 18, 1841

...  I must now return to the subject.  I told you of the conversation I had with Fanny when she spoke so openly and so sensibly of her feelings....  She said she was too old to think it necessary to be what is called desperately in love, and without feeling that his age was an objection or that the disparity was too great, yet, she said, if he had been a younger man she would have decided long ago.  And that is the truth.  It is his age alone that prevents her at once deciding in his favour.  It prevents those feelings arising in her mind, without which it would be a struggle to accept him, and this she never will do.  She was therefore desirous that he should know the state of her feelings, that she might be again at her ease.  He had seen her manner cold towards him, and wrote to say that he would call upon me yesterday.  I was horribly frightened, as I hate lovers, and you must allow that it was a difficult task to go through....  However, he put me so completely at my ease by his sensible, open, gentle manner, that my task was less difficult than I expected—­except that I fell in love with him so desperately, he touched my heart so deeply that I could scarcely refrain from promising him Fanny whenever he chose.  There is a depth of feeling and humility about him, and a candour and generosity in his judgments, that I never saw so strongly in anyone before, and every word that he spoke made me regret more and more the barrier that prevents him from becoming one of us.  I said, of course, Fanny’s wish and ours could only be for him to do what he considered best for his own happiness, and that half-measures did not answer; that he now knew the whole truth and it was for him to judge how to act.  He said then, “I cannot have a doubt; I will visit you less frequently; I will speak very little to you in public, but I cannot, unless you positively forbid me, renounce the intimacy now established with your family.”  I said, of course, that it would be a great happiness to us all not to lose him, but that I was very doubtful of the wisdom of his decision, as it might only be rendering himself more unhappy.  “That,” he said, “is my affair, and I am willing to run the risk.” ...  Fanny, to whom I told everything, says she is now quite happy, and her mind at ease.

He seems, however, to have made up his mind to keep away from them for some weeks.  The next mention of him is on May 7th, more than a month later: 

Morning visit from Lord John.  Said he had a great speech to make this evening on sugar....  Billy came to dinner full of admiration of the speech.  Honest, noble, clever.  Well, we shall go out with honour.

This speech on sugar was made at a crisis of particular difficulty.  The debate was the first important discussion in Parliament on the new principle of Free Trade.  Greville describes Lord John’s speech as an “extraordinarily good one,” and Lord Sydenham [19] wrote from Canada: