And Mr. Kenyon will not come until next Monday perhaps.  How am I?  But I am too well to be asked about.  Is it not a warm summer?  The weather is as ‘miraculous’ as the rest, I think.  It is you who are unwell and make people uneasy, dearest.  Say how you are, and promise me to do what is right and try to be better.  The walking, the changing of the air, the leaving off Luria ... do what is right, I earnestly beseech you.  The other day, I heard of Tennyson being ill again, ... too ill to write a simple note to his friend Mr. Venables, who told George.  A little more than a year ago, it would have been no worse a thing to me to hear of your being ill than to hear of his being ill!—­How the world has changed since then!  To me, I mean.

Did I say that ever ... that ‘I knew you must be tired?’ And it was not even so true as that the coming event threw its shadow before?

Thursday night.—­I have begun on another sheet—­I could not write here what was in my heart—­yet I send you this paper besides to show how I was writing to you this morning.  In the midst of it came a female friend of mine and broke the thread—­the visible thread, that is.

And now, even now, at this safe eight o’clock, I could not be safe from somebody, who, in her goodnature and my illfortune, must come and sit by me—­and when my letter was come—­’why wouldn’t I read it?  What wonderful politeness on my part.’  She would not and could not consent to keep me from reading my letter.  She would stand up by the fire rather.

No, no, three times no.  Brummel got into the carriage before the Regent, ... (didn’t he?) but I persisted in not reading my letter in the presence of my friend.  A notice on my punctiliousness may be put down to-night in her ‘private diary.’  I kept the letter in my hand and only read it with those sapient ends of the fingers which the mesmerists make so much ado about, and which really did seem to touch a little of what was inside.  Not all, however, happily for me!  Or my friend would have seen in my eyes what they did not see.

May God bless you!  Did I ever say that I had an objection to read the verses at six years old—­or see the drawings either?  I am reasonable, you observe!  Only, ‘Pauline,’ I must have some day—­why not without the emendations?  But if you insist on them, I will agree to wait a little—­if you promise at last to let me see the book, which I will not show.  Some day, then! you shall not be vexed nor hurried for the day—­some day.  Am I not generous?  And I was ‘precocious’ too, and used to make rhymes over my bread and milk when I was nearly a baby ... only really it was mere echo-verse, that of mine, and had nothing of mark or of indication, such as I do not doubt that yours had.  I used to write of virtue with a large ‘V,’ and ‘Oh Muse’ with a harp, and things of that sort.  At nine years old I wrote what I called ’an epic’—­and at ten, various