Thursday. August 11.
What a weight there is on my heart today. It is like lead, only colder. I wish I had not gone yesterday, where I did. I wish Miss Boyd had stayed in the room, when she proposed staying: I wish I had commanded myself sufficiently to avoid making that foolish observation! I wish I had never gone to Malvern! Vain wishes, all of them!—
I wrote a note to Mrs. Martin, to thank her for her kind present; & I hope she may send back the 3d. vol of the Last Man, by my messenger. If she had read as many books as I have, she must have been at least six hundred years old by this time. No answer! Mrs. Martin was out—& so was I.
On Wednesday before breakfast, I read the beginning of Antoninus’s 10th. book, & I went on with it today, but not to the end. My energies felt dead within me: & how could I do anything without them? Nothing but reading the 3d. vol: of Mrs. Shelley, which I despatched in two hours[1]—(which did come at last!!—) No going out today. Marcus Antoninus after Mrs. Shelly [sic], & drinking tea after Marcus. Not a letter!—
1. No wonder Mrs. Martin’s reading speed did not match E.B.B.’s—the third volume contained 352 pages.
