fair--I do not believe a
word. He is too generous--has too much real sensibility. I fought his
battle, poor Orion. 'And so,' she said 'you believe it possible for a
disinterested man to become really attached to two women, heiresses,
on the same day?' I doubted the _fact_. And then she showed me a note,
an autograph note from the poet, confessing the M or N part of the
business--while Miss O or P confessed herself, said Miss Mitford. But
I persisted in doubting, notwithstanding the lady's confessions, or
convictions, as they might be. And just think of Mr. Horne not having
tact enough to keep out of these multitudinous scrapes, for those few
days which on three separate occasions he paid Miss Mitford in a
neighbourhood where all were strangers to him,--and never outstaying
his week! He must have been _foolish_, read it all how we may.

And so am _I_, to write this 'personal talk' to you when you will not
care for it--yet you asked me, and it may make you smile, though
Wordsworth's tea-kettle outsings it all.

When your Monday letter came, I was reading the criticism on Hunt and
his Italian poets, in the _Examiner_. How I liked to be pulled by the
sleeve to your translations!--How I liked everything!--Pulci, Pietro
... and you, best!

Yet here's a naivete which I found in your letter! I will write it out
that you may read it--

'However it' (the headache) 'was no sooner gone in a degree, than a
worse plague came--_I sate thinking of you_.'

Very satisfactory _that_ is, and very clear.

May God bless you dearest, dearest! Be careful of yourself. The cold
makes me _languid_, as heat is apt to make everybody; but I am not
unwell, and keep up the fire and the thoughts of you.

Your worse ... worst plague

Your own

BA.

I shall hear? yes! And admire my obedience in having written 'a long
letter' _to_ the letter!

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

Wednesday Morning.
[Post-mark, February 11, 1846.]

My sweetest 'plague,' _did_ I really write that sentence so, without
gloss or comment in close vicinity? I can hardly think it--but you
know well, well where the real plague lay,--that I thought of you as
thinking, in your infinite goodness, of untoward chances which had
kept me from you--and if I did not dwell more particularly on that
thinking of _yours_,