charities and virtues of her
friends. Perhaps she ministers to _you_ now instead of being ministered
to by you, while the remembrance of her life on earth is tenderly united
to you ever, a proof before men and angels that _your_ life (whatever
you may please to say of yourself) has not been useless, nor barren of
good and tender deeds....

In this letter and the last (such depressed letters!) you compare your
own fate with that of some others with an injustice which God measures,
and which I too have knowledge of. Isa, you speak you know not what. Be
sure of one thing, however, that God has not been niggardly towards you,
and that He never made a creature for which He did not make the work
suited to its hand. He never made a creature necessarily useless, nor
gave a life which it was not sin on the creature's part to hold
unthankfully and throw back as a poor gift. Your excellent understanding
will work clear your spirits presently. Some of those whom you think
enviable, if they showed you their secret griefs, unsuspected by you,
would leave tears in your eyes for _them_, not _you_. Every heart knows
its own bitterness, and God knows when the bitterest drop is necessary
for the heart's health. May He bless you, love you, teach you,
strengthen you, make you serene and bright in Him, dear, dear Isa. I
have spoken as to a sister; I have spoken as to my own soul in an hour
of faintness. Let us take courage, Isa.

Dear, I had just folded up your parcel for Miss Alexander that my
brother George should take it to-morrow. It has been my first
opportunity for England--at least, for London. But now I will carry it
back to you....

Arabel stays with me till we go, which will be in a fortnight perhaps
from now. We have an apartment in an exquisite situation, two paces from
the Tuileries Gardens, first floor, three best bedrooms and two
servants' rooms, a closet of a dining-room, a salon--all small, but
exquisitely comfortable and Parisian, looking into a court though, and
we are not tempted to stay the winter. No; we return to Florence
faithfully. Write again, and be happy, Isa; it is as if I said _be
good_. Tell me, can it be true that Lytton is in Florence with his
mother, as Father Prout assures us on the authority of Lady Walpole?...

Write to your ever, in word and deed, loving

BA.

* * * * *

In October the travellers were back in Florence, but this time only for
a short stay of some