MS location unknown. Printed in Dulce Domum, 177-8.
It is quite a comfort, my dear Mrs. Moberly, to have your letter, and to answer it immediately. And it is better to write than to see you; our hearts would be too full for speech. Charlotte and I can only trust ourselves to talk at times. It comes at the best possible time for us all; these services are so especially full of Mr. Keble.1 At the same time we are quite alive to the special mercy of his not having been left to linger a few sad, feeble years without her to comfort him, and I suspect that she feels that strongly herself. She has surprised us so often, she may yet rally; and she has learnt her lesson of submission and patient waiting so thoroughly that any way it must be well for her. The person I pity is Sir William Heathcote; fancy having to appoint a successor! Lady Heathcote says he was quite knocked down by it. Of Dr. Moberly’s two invitations, to the house of mourning and the house of feasting, it is not difficult to guess which he will accept. Bitter as the sorrow is, I think it would have been worse but for the warning of last year; he had written so cheerfully of late, we had almost forgotten his precarious condition.
It will always be a pleasure to Charlotte to think how welcome her Saturday’s letters have always been to them. I do not know how to leave off writing; it seems the only thing I have spirits to do. . .