er, he answered that 'he had not time.' Time
has its 'revenges.'

I am very glad that dear Mr. Procter has had some of these last benefits
of one beloved by so many. What a loss, what a loss! Was there no
bequest to yourself? We have heard scarcely anything.

May God bless you, dearest Mona Nina, with the blessing of years old and
new.

Robert's love. Your ever attached

BA.

* * * * *

_To Mrs. Martin_

Florence: December 29, 1856.

My dearest Mrs. Martin,--I am very, very sorry. I feel for you to the
bottom of my heart. But she was a pure spirit, leaning out the way God
had marked for her to go, and you had not associated this world too much
with her, as if she could have been meant to stay long in it. Always you
felt that she was about to go--did you not, dear friend?--and so that
she does not stay cannot be an astonishment to you. The pain is the
same; only it can't be the bitter, unnatural pain of certain
separations. Her sweetness has gone to the sweet, her lovely nature to
the lovely; no violence was done to her in carrying her home. May God
enable you to dwell on this till you are satisfied--glad, and not sorry!
That the spirits do not go far, and that they love us still, has grown
to me surer and surer. And yet, how death shakes us!

Yes indeed. I, too, have been very, very sad. This Christmas has come to
me like a cloud. I can scarcely fancy England without that bright face
and sympathetic hand, that princely nature, in which you might put your
trust more reasonably than in princes. These ten years back he has stood
to me almost in my father's place; and now the place is empty--doubly.
Since the birth of my child (seven years since) he has allowed
us--rather, insisted on our accepting (for my husband was loth)--a
hundred a year, and without it we should have often been in hard
straits. His last act was to leave us eleven thousand pounds; and I do
not doubt but that, if he had not known our preference of a simple mode
of life and a freedom from worldly responsibilities (born artists as we
both are), the bequest would have been greater still. As it is, we shall
be relieved from pecuniary pressure, and your affectionateness will be
glad to hear this, but I shall have more comfort from the consideration
of it presently than I can at this instant, when the loss, the empty
chair, the silent voice, the apparently suspended sympathy, must still
keep painfully uppermost.