(Fanny Burney to Mrs. Phillips.)
Friday, May 31, Chesington.
My heart so smites me this morning with making no answer to all I
have been requested to weigh and decide, that I feel I cannot
with any ease return to town without at least complying with one
demand, which first, at parting yesterday, brought me to write
fully to you, my Susan, if I could not elsewhere to my
satisfaction.

in the course of last night and this morning Much indeed has
occurred to me, that now renders my longer silence as to
prospects and proceedings unjustifiable to myself. I will
therefore now address myself to both my beloved confidants, and
open to them all my thoughts, and entreat their own with equal
plainness in return.

M. d'Arblay's last three letters convince me he is desperately
dejected when alone, and when perfectly natural. It is not that
he wants patience, but he wants rational expectation of better
times, expectation founded on something more than mere aerial
hope, that builds one day upon what the next blasts; and then has
to build again, and again to be blasted.

What affects me the most in this situation is, that his time may
as completely be lost as another's peace, by waiting for the
effects of distant events, vague, bewildering, and remote, and
quite as likely to lead to ill as to good. The very waiting,
indeed, with the mind in such a state, is in itself an evil
scarce to be recompensed. . . .