y thanking dearest Sarianna again for her note, and by
assuring her that the affectionate tone of it quite made me happy and
grateful together--that I am grateful to _all of you_: do _feel_ that
I am. For the rest, when I see (afar off) Robert's minute manuscripts,
a certain distrust steals over me of anything I can possibly tell you
of our way of living, lest it should be the vainest of repetitions,
and by no means worth repeating, both at once. Such a quiet silent
life it is--going to hear the Friar preach in the Duomo, a grand event
in it, and the wind laying flat all our schemes about Volterra and
Lucca! I have had to give up even the Friar for these three days past;
there is nothing for me when I have driven out Robert to take his
necessary walk but to sit and watch the pinewood blaze. He is grieved
about the illness of his cousin, only I do hope that your next letter
will confirm the happy change which stops the further anxiety, and
come soon for that purpose, besides others. Your letters never can
come too often, remember, even when they have not to speak of illness,
and I for my part must always have a thankful interest in your cousin
for the kind part he took in the happiest event of my life. You have
to tell us too of your dear mother--Robert is so anxious about her
always. How deeply and tenderly he loves her and all of you, never
could have been more manifest than now when he is away from you and
has to talk _of_ you instead of _to_ you. By the way (or rather out
of the way) I quite took your view of the purposed ingratitude to poor
Miss Haworth[158]--it would have been worse in him than the sins of
'Examiner' and 'Athenaeum.' If authors won't feel for one another,
there's an end of the world of writing! Oh, I think he proposed it in
a moment of hardheartedness--we all put on tortoiseshell now and then,
and presently come out into the sun as sensitively as ever. Besides
Miss Haworth has written to us very kindly; and kindness doesn't
spring up everywhere, like the violets in your gravel walks. See how I
understand Hatcham. Do try to love me a little, dearest Sarianna, and
(with my grateful love always to your father and mother) let me be
your affectionate sister,

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING,
or rather BA.

[Footnote 158: Miss E.F. Haworth (several letters to whom are given
farther on) was an old friend of Robert Browning's, and published a
volume of verse in 1847, to which this passage seems to allude.]