Ah! How shall I tell you! How express to you! – Have I strength to write? – Alas! how could I complain of him! – Henrietta! My dear Henrietta! He is ill, dangerously ill – Lord Ossory is dying! My God! He is dying – See the billet which I have just received.

To Lady Catesby.

I have now but a few moments to live; the countenances of those about me, and the resistance they make to my will, assure me of it. It is with difficulty I obtain permission to write – Alas! why have I so much desired it! – What have I to say to you? You will hear with pleasure, that the object of your contempt, of your aversion, has finished his wretched days – Ah! Lady Catesby! What cruelty! – But is this a time to complain of it! Pardon at least, the memory of an unhappy lover; I have never deceived you: I have loved you always. Those letters which you have demanded of me with an inflexibility, of which I thought your heart incapable, shall be faithfully restored to you after my death. Do not, Madam, deprive me of them whilst I yet breathe.

After his death – I shall hear with pleasure – Can he believe this, can he imagine it? – Ah! Inhuman! There remained only this blow – Ill! dying perhaps – Alas! where is he? With whom? In what hands! – Has he advice? – Is there any near him? – O, this anguish is insupportable.

The person who brought this fatal billet, returned without stopping, without waiting a moment, without speaking a single word. How shall I find out – Abandoned to my fears, to the most lively inquietude – Ah! Pity me! My heart is torn in pieces. A feeble hope dawns upon my mind: I have sent to the house where one of Lord Ossory's servants passed two or three days. They assure me, that servant came from Sir Charles Halifax's, who has lately bought an estate four miles from hence.