is not like--and I
knew it was not, before I saw you, though Mr. Kenyon said, 'Rather
like!'

By the way Mr. Kenyon does not come. It is strange that he should not
come: when he told me that he could not see me 'for a week or a
fortnight,' he meant it, I suppose.

So it is to be on Saturday? And I will write directly to America--the
letter will be sent by the time you get this. May God bless you ever.

It is not so much a look of 'ferocity,' ... as you say, ... in that
head, as of _expression by intention_. Several people have said of it
what nobody would say of you ... 'How affected-looking.' Which is too
strong--but it is not like you, in any way, and there's the truth.

So until Saturday. I read 'Luria' and feel the life in him. But _walk_
and do not _work_! do you?

Wholly your

E.B.B.

_R.B. to E.B.B._

Sunday Night.
[Post-mark, December 8, 1845.]

Well, I did see your brother last night ... and very wisely neither
spoke nor kept silence in the proper degree, but said that 'I hoped
you were well'--from the sudden feeling that I must say _something_ of
you--not pretend indifference about you _now_ ... and from the
impossibility of saying the _full_ of what I might; because other
people were by--and after, in the evening, when I should have remedied
the first imperfect expression, I had not altogether the heart. So,
you, dearest, will clear me with him if he wonders, will you not? But
it all hangs together; speaking of you,--to you,--writing to you--all
is helpless and sorrowful work by the side of what is in my soul to
say and to write--or is it not the natural consequence? If these
vehicles of feelings sufficed--_there_ would be the end!--And that my
feeling for you should end!... For the rest, the headache which kept
away while I sate with you, made itself amends afterward, and as it is
unkind to that warm Talfourd to look blank at his hospitable
endeavours, all my power of face went _a qui de droit_--

Did your brother tell you ... yes, I think ... of the portentous book,
lettered II, and thick as a law-book, of congratulatory letters on
the appearance of 'Ion'?--But how under the B's in the Index came
'Miss Barrett' and, woe's me, 'R.B.'! I don't know when I have had so
ghastly a visitation. There was the utterly _forgotten_ letter, in