what I could of the place and its inhabitants.

"With that view, I left my letters at Government House, at Mr.
Clarkson's, Colonel Bunting's, Mrs. Castleton's, and elsewhere,
according to direction; and immediately found answer in a crowd of
invitations. I need not vex you nor myself, Emmy, writing as I do with a
heavy, heavy heart, by describing gayeties in which I felt no pleasure,
even when amongst them, for my Emmy was not there: splendour,
prodigality, and red-hot rooms, only made endurable by perpetually
fanning punkahs: pompous counsellors, authorities, and other men in
office, and a glut of military uniforms: vulgar wealth, transparent
match-making, and predominating dullness: along with some few of the
charities and kindnesses of life (Mrs. Bunting, in particular, is an
amiable, motherly, good-hearted woman), all these you will readily fancy
for yourself.

"My trouble is deeper than any thing so slight as the common satiations
of _ennui_: for I have heard in these circles in which your--my--the
general, I mean, chiefly mixed, so much of that ill-rumour that it
cannot all be false: they knew it all, and were certain of it all, too
well, Emily, dear. And I have been pestering Nurse Mackie night and day;
but the old woman is so afraid of being left behind any where, or thrown
overboard, or dropped, upon some desert rock, that she is quite cross,
and won't say a single word in answer, even when I tell her all these
terrible tales. Her resolution is, not to reveal one syllable more,
until she sets foot on England; and several people at Madras annoyed me
exceedingly by saying, that this kind of thing is an old trick with
people who wish to be sent home again. She has hidden away her papers
somewhere; not that I was going to steal them: but it shows how little
trust she puts in any thing, or any one, except the keeping of her own