1823-1824] An Averted Duel 159 



and John fetching the doctor two or three times a day, I 

 believe, and yet he did not seem the least sensible of any of 

 their attention. Harriet is positively very much attached 

 to him, incredible as it may seem, but her gentle nature 

 could not see a person so dependent on herself for any 

 comfort without becoming so. Au reste, as you French say, 

 he is a dying man, but Dr Baron thinks he will hold out 

 another winter. . . . The same dull things he used to say 

 twenty years ago he says now, the same spiteful hits at 

 Mackintosh. 



Fanny Allen to her niece Elizabeth Wedgwood. 



CBESSELLY, Sept. 14M [1824]. 



. . . Yesterday brought to a happy conclusion a dis- 

 agreeable business between John [Allen] and Sir John X. 

 I must tell you that Mr Adams and John, as joint trustees 

 for Mr Phillips, thought it right to lay out a certain sum of 

 money, left in Lord Milford's will for the purpose, in the 

 purchase of land ; and bought a valuable lot, at the valuation 

 of a man of business near to Sir John's property. Both 

 Sir John and Lady X. have been very violent about this 

 and have pretended it was done in enmity against him. 

 John wrote to him last week saying that he hoped that 

 neither he nor Mr X. would abstain from shooting over the 

 estate just purchased, that he should scarcely have taken 

 the liberty of mentioning this, if it had not been told him 

 that they had considered the object of their buying this 

 estate as hostile to him, which was very far from being the 

 case. In answer to this civil letter, John received on Friday 

 last a most insolent one from Sir John, saying that he should 

 never accept any obligation from those who were so little 

 his friends, and that he should consider it neither honourable 

 nor (something else, I forget what) to buy an estate in 

 opposition to the wishes of a gentleman, the next neighbour. 

 You will observe that these are not the words of the letter 

 but only the purport of it. 



John was of course very much annoyed at receiving this, 



