Sunday.—­The Duke of Palmella takes the whole vessel for the 20th and therefore if I go it must be on the 17th.  Therefore (besides) as George must be on sessions to-morrow, he will settle the question with Papa to-night.  In the meantime our poor Occy is not much better, though a little, and is ordered leeches on his head, and is confined to his bed and attended by physician and surgeon.  It is not decided typhus, but they will not answer for its not being infectious; and although he is quite at the top of the house, two stories above me, I shall not like you to come indeed.  And then there will be only room for a farewell, and I who am a coward shrink from the saying of it.  No—­not being able to see you to-morrow, (Mr. Kenyon is to be here to-morrow, he says) let us agree to throw away Wednesday.  I will write, ... you will write perhaps—­and above all things you will promise to write by the ‘Star’ on Monday, that the captain may give me your letter at Gibraltar.  You promise?  But I shall hear from you before then, and oftener than once, and you will acquiesce about Wednesday and grant at once that there can be no gain, no good, in that miserable good-bye-ing.  I do not want the pain of it to remember you by—­I shall remember very well without it, be sure.  Still it shall be as you like—­as you shall chose—­and if you are disappointed about Wednesday (if it is not vain in me to talk of disappointments) why do with Wednesday as you think best ... always understanding that there’s no risk of infection.

Monday.—­All this I had written yesterday—­and to-day it all is worse than vain.  Do not be angry with me—­do not think it my fault—­but I do not go to Italy ... it has ended as I feared.  What passed between George and Papa there is no need of telling:  only the latter said that I ’might go if I pleased, but that going it would be under his heaviest displeasure.’  George, in great indignation, pressed the question fully:  but all was vain ... and I am left in this position ... to go, if I please, with his displeasure over me, (which after what you have said and after what Mr. Kenyon has said, and after what my own conscience and deepest moral convictions say aloud, I would unhesitatingly do at this hour!) and necessarily run the risk of exposing my sister and brother to that same displeasure ... from which risk I shrink and fall back and feel that to incur it, is impossible.  Dear Mr. Kenyon has been here and we have been talking—­and he sees what I see ... that I am justified in going myself, but not in bringing others into difficulty.  The very kindness and goodness with which they desire me (both my sisters) ‘not to think of them,’ naturally makes me think more of them.  And so, tell me that I am not wrong in taking up my chain again and acquiescing in this hard necessity.  The bitterest ‘fact’ of all is, that I had believed Papa to have loved me more than he obviously does:  but I never regret knowledge ...  I