ng, (and great scandalization
of the third person, peeping through the fringes of Flush's ears!)
meanwhile, I wonder whether if I meet Mrs. Jameson I may practise
diplomacy and say carelessly 'I should be glad to know what Miss B. is
like--' No, that I must not do, something tells me, 'for reasons, for
reasons'--

I do not know--you may perhaps have to wait a little longer for my
'divine Murillo' of a Tragedy. My sister is copying it as I give the
pages, but--in fact my wise head does ache a little--it is
inconceivable! As if it took a great storm to topple over some stone,
and once the stone pushed from its right place, any bird's foot, which
would hardly bend the hawthorn spray, may set it trembling! The aching
begins with reading the presentation-list at the Drawing-room quite
naturally, and with no shame at all! But it is gentle, well-behaved
aching now, so I _do_ care, as you bid me, Ba, my Ba, whom I call Ba
to my heart but could not, I really believe, call so before another,
even your sister, if--if--

But Ba, I call you boldly here, and I dare kiss your dear, dear eyes,
till to-morrow--Bless you, my own.

_E.B.B. to R.B._

Sunday.
[Post-mark, March 2, 1846.]

You never could think that I meant any insinuation against you by a
word of what was said yesterday, or that I sought or am likely to seek
a 'security'! do you know it was not right of you to use such an
expression--indeed no. You were angry with me for just one minute, or
you would not have used it--and why? Now what did I say that was wrong
or unkind even by construction? If I did say anything, it was three
times wrong, and unjust as well as unkind, and wronged my own heart
and consciousness of all that you are to me, more than it could _you_.
But you began speaking of yourself just as a woman might speak under
the same circumstances (you remember what you said), and then _I_,
remembering that all the men in the world would laugh such an idea to
scorn, said something to that effect, you _know_. I once was in
company with a man, however, who valued himself very much on his
constancy to a woman who was so deeply affected by it that she became
his wife at last ... and the whole neighbourhood came out to stare at
him on that ground as a sort of monster. And can you guess what the
constancy meant? Seven years before, he loved that woman, he said, and
she repulsed him. 'And in the mean