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the position or treating the gossip with contempt, he fanned 
the notoriety by increasing his courteous attentions in proportion 
as the matter attracted notice.* This at last raised the fiend of 
jealousy in the breast of young Sheridan, who with youthful 
ardour and a feeling of being privileged, ventured to protest and 
expostulate with his friend hoping he would modify his conduct. 
Thus originated the difference between these two which produced 
such notoriety for both and for Bath in connection with them. 
Seized by this jealous frenzy, in a state of captious unsatisfied 
temper and ill-directed imagination, every action, every attention 
or courtesy to the young lady became mystified into a terror, 
the lover’s “days were hours of care, his nights of watchfulness.” 
Having got rid in former time of his friend Halhed and after him 
of his own brother, he could no longer brook even the semblance 
of a rival in the young girl’s mind, so he proceeded to get rid of 
Mathews by making him odious first in her eyes and 
then trying to do the same in the eyes of all Bath. 
Using his opportunities he put the story in its worst form 
before Miss Linley, who became greatly depressed at this 
new trouble. Mathews, her only male friend, was thus got 
rid of in turn, and the young lady was consequently entirely 
isolated. Taking advantage of her hatred of her profession and 
her equally hated bondage to her father, the youth now persuaded 
her that flight alone would save her from these troubles. She 
did not consult her father, we are told, fearing his anger ; so he 
was another kept out of the way. It happened, too, just now 
that Mr. Sheridan the papa was called away to Ireland, so he 
also was out of the way, when the son seized the opportunity of 
persuading the girl to elope.t .The affair being thus determined 
and arranged, to give confidence at the start, young Sheridan 
engaged a woman servant to act “propriety” as a third party, 
and whilst she waited in a post chaise in Walcot Street on the 
* Watkins. + Watkins. 
