in any least interest of yours—­and before that, I am, and would ever be, still silent.  But now—­what is to make you raise that hand?  I will not speak now; not seem to take advantage of your present feelings,—­we will be rational, and all-considering and weighing consequences, and foreseeing them—­but first I will prove ... if that has to be done, why—­but I begin speaking, and I should not, I know.

Bless you, love!

R.B.

To-morrow I see you, without fail.  I am rejoiced as you can imagine, at your brother’s improved state.

E.B.B. to R.B.

Tuesday,
[Post-mark, October 15, 1845.]

Will this note reach you at the ‘fatal hour’ ... or sooner?  At any rate it is forced to ask you to take Thursday for Wednesday, inasmuch as Mr. Kenyon in his exceeding kindness has put off his journey just for me, he says, because he saw me depressed about the decision, and wished to come and see me again to-morrow and talk the spirits up, I suppose.  It is all so kind and good, that I cannot find a voice to grumble about the obligation it brings of writing thus.  And then, if you suffer from cold and influenza, it will be better for you not to come for another day, ...  I think that, for comfort.  Shall I hear how you are to-night, I wonder?  Dear Occy ‘turned the corner,’ the physician said, yesterday evening, and, although a little fluctuating to-day, remains on the whole considerably better.  They were just in time to keep the fever from turning to typhus.

How fast you print your book, for it is to be out on the first of November!  Why it comes out suddenly like the sun.  Mr. Kenyon asked me if I had seen anything you were going to print; and when I mentioned the second part of the ‘Duchess’ and described how your perfect rhymes, perfectly new, and all clashing together as by natural attraction, had put me at once to shame and admiration, he began to praise the first part of the same poem (which I had heard him do before, by the way) and extolled it as one of your most striking productions.

And so until Thursday!  May God bless you—­

and as the heart goes, ever yours.

I am glad for Tennyson, and glad for Keats.  It is well to be able to be glad about something—­is is it not? about something out of ourselves.  And (in myself) I shall be most glad, if I have a letter to-night.  Shall I?

R.B. to E.B.B.

[Post-mark, October 15, 1845.]

Thanks, my dearest, for the good news—­of the fever’s abatement—­it is good, too, that you write cheerfully, on the whole:  what is it to me that you write is of me ...  I shall never say that!  Mr. Kenyon is all kindness, and one gets to take it as not so purely natural a thing, the showing kindness to those it concerns, and belongs to,—­well!  On Thursday, then,—­to-morrow!  Did you not get a note of mine, a hurried note, which was meant for yesterday-afternoon’s delivery?