all this, suddenly, the knock did come, to my utter astonishment.  I ran to the stair, and in a moment heard Sheridan’s voice.  I do not know why, but I took a horror of seeing him, and hurried Sally down to say I was out.  I heard him answer:  ’Tell her I call’d twice this morning, and want particularly to see her, for I know she is at home.’  Sally protested I was out, and S. answered:  ’Then I shall walk up and down before the door till she comes in,’ and there he is walking sure enough.  It is partly all the nonsense he talk’d all this year, and the hating to see any one when I cannot see you, that makes me dislike letting him in so much.”

He solemnly did sentry-go for nearly an hour, she goes on to say.  In that hour he was in his fifty-first year, she in her fortieth.

If she revealed these sorry doings to Antinous with the view of fanning embers, she did not succeed in drawing more than a languid protest from him.  “As to Sheridan, in the morning I purposely staid in my room till the time of our setting out, and only saw him as I was getting into the carriage, so had nothing more to tell....  You say I am not angry enough.  I am provok’d, vex’d, and asham’d.  To feel more deeply I must care for the person who offends me....”  I cannot myself read either vexation or shame in her reports.  Provocation I can and do read—­but it is not she who is provoked.

In 1804, Antinous in Petersburg, there are new antics to record.  “You will think I live at the play; I am just return’d from Drury Lane....  Sheridan persists in coming every night to us.  He says one word to my sister; then retires to the further corner of the box, where with arms across, deep and audible sighs, and sometimes tears! he remains without uttering and motionless, with his eyes fix’d on me in the most marked and distressing manner, during the whole time we stay.  To-night he followed us in before the play begun, and remained as I tell you thro’ the play and farce.  As we were going I dropped my shawl and muff; he picked them up and with a look of ludicrous humility presented them to Mr. Hill to give me.”  And this was the author of The School for Scandal.

Next year, being that of Trafalgar, and Sheridan’s fifty-fourth, he began a course of persecution which definitely marks an access of dementia.  The affair took an acute turn suddenly, and I don’t intend to say more about it than that it took the form of anonymous and obscene letters, some of them addressed to Lady Bessborough’s daughter, Caroline, then a child, some to herself, some to the children of the Duchess of Devonshire.  The letters, which continued throughout the year, were signed with the names of friends—­a Mr. Hill, J.W.  Ward, and others.  Some were sent out signed with her name.  The editor of the correspondence says that “Lady Bessborough was subsequently convinced by evidence which appeared to her conclusive that Sheridan was the writer.”  There can be no