You became, to my comfort, attached to it, so did Sir William, thinking her the finest child he had ever seen.

She is become of that age when it is necessary to remove her from a mere nurse and to think of educating her....

I shall tell you, my dear Emma, more of this matter when I come to England, but I am now anxious for the child's being placed under your protecting wing." With this letter (or, possibly, with another written the same day) was found an enclosure, undated and unsigned, but in Nelson's handwriting.

"My beloved, how I feel for your situation and that of our dear Horatia, our dear child...."[21] The indifference to incidental consequences which was shown by Nelson, when once he had decided upon a course of action, was part of his natural, as well as of his more distinctively military character; but in this connection with Lady Hamilton he must have felt intuitively that not only her reputation--which probably was his first care--was involved, but his own also.

The hospitality, the attention, the friendship, extended to him at Naples and Palermo, were not from Lady Hamilton only but from her husband also, in whose house he lived, and who to the end, so far as the records show, professed for him unbounded esteem and confidence.