And am I not grateful to your sisters—­entirely grateful for that crowning comfort; it is ‘miraculous,’ too, if you please—­for you shall know me by finger-tip intelligence or any art magic of old or new times—­but they do not see me, know me—­and must moreover be jealous of you, chary of you, as the daughters of Hesperus, of wonderers and wistful lookers up at the gold apple—­yet instead of ’rapidly levelling eager eyes’—­they are indulgent?  Then—­shall I wish capriciously they were not your sisters, not so near you, that there might be a kind of grace in loving them for it’—­but what grace can there be when ... yes, I will tell you—­no, I will not—­it is foolish!—­and it is not foolish in me to love the table and chairs and vases in your room.

Let me finish writing to-morrow; it would not become me to utter a word against the arrangement—­and Saturday promised, too—­but though all concludes against the early hour on Monday, yet—­but this is wrong—­on Tuesday it shall be, then,—­thank you, dearest! you let me keep up the old proper form, do you not?—­I shall continue to thank, and be gratified &c. as if I had some untouched fund of thanks at my disposal to cut a generous figure with on occasion!  And so, now, for your kind considerateness thank you ... that I say, which, God knows, could not say, if I died ten deaths in one to do you good, ’you are repaid’—­

To-morrow I will write, and answer more.  I am pretty well, and will go out to-day—­to-night.  My Act is done, and copied—­I will bring it.  Do you see the Athenaeum?  By Chorley surely—­and kind and satisfactory.  I did not expect any notice for a long time—­all that about the ‘mist,’ ‘unchanged manner’ and the like is politic concession to the Powers that Be ... because he might tell me that and much more with his own lips or unprofessional pen, and be thanked into the bargain, yet he does not.  But I fancy he saves me from a rougher hand—­the long extracts answer every purpose—­

There is all to say yet—­to-morrow!

And ever, ever your own; God bless you!

R.

Admire the clean paper....  I did not notice that I have been writing in a desk where a candle fell!  See the bottoms of the other pages!

R.B. to E.B.B.

Sunday Evening.
[Post-mark, January 19, 1846.]

You may have seen, I put off all the weighty business part of the letter—­but I shall do very little with it now.  To be sure, a few words will serve, because you understand me, and believe in enough of me.  First, then, I am wholly satisfied, thoroughly made happy in your assurance.  I would build up an infinity of lives, if I could plan them, one on the other, and all resting on you, on your word—­I fully believe in it,—­of my feeling, the gratitude, let there be no attempt to speak.  And for ‘waiting’; ’not hurrying’,—­I leave all with you henceforth—­all you say is most wise, most convincing.