To-day Mr. Kenyon came, and do you know, he has made a beatific confusion between last Saturday and next Saturday, and said to me he had told Miss Thomson to mind to come on Friday if she wished to see me ... ‘remembering’ (he added) ‘that Mr. Browning took Saturday!!’ So I let him mistake the one week for the other—­’Mr. Browning took Saturday,’ it was true, both ways.  Well—­and then he went on to tell me that he had heard from Mrs. Jameson who was at Brighton and unwell, and had written to say this and that to him, and to enquire besides—­now, what do you think, she enquired besides? ’how you and ...  Browning were’ said Mr. Kenyon—­I write his words.  He is coming, perhaps to-morrow, or perhaps Sunday—­Saturday is to have a twofold safety.  That is, if you are not ill again.  Dearest, you will not think of coming if you are ill ... unwell even.  I shall not be frightened next time, as I told you—­I shall have the precedent.  Before, I had to think!  ’It has never happened so—­there must be a cause—­and if it is a very, very, bad cause, why no one will tell me ... it will not seem my concern’—­that was my thought on Saturday.  But another time ... only, if it is possible to keep well, do keep well, beloved, and think of me instead of Domizia, and let there be no other time for your suffering ... my waiting is nothing.  I shall remember for the future that you may have the headache—­and do you remember it too!

For Mr. Horne I take your testimony gladly and believingly. She blots with her eyes sometimes.  She hates ... and loves, in extreme degrees.  We have, once or twice or thrice, been on the border of mutual displeasure, on this very subject, for I grew really vexed to observe the trust on one side and the dyspathy on the other—­using the mildest of words.  You see, he found himself, down in Berkshire, in quite a strange element of society,—­he, an artist in his good and his evil,—­and the people there, ‘county families,’ smoothly plumed in their conventions, and classing the ringlets and the aboriginal way of using water-glasses among offences against the Moral Law.  Then, meaning to be agreeable, or fascinating perhaps, made it twenty times worse.  Writing in albums about the graces, discoursing meditated impromptus at picnics, playing on the guitar in fancy dresses,—­all these things which seemed to poor Orion as natural as his own stars I dare say, and just the things suited to the genus poet, and to himself specifically,—­were understood by the natives and their ’rural deities’ to signify, that he intended to marry one half the county, and to run away with the other.  But Miss Mitford should have known better—­she should.  And she would have known better, if she had liked him—­for the liking could have been unmade by no such offences.  She is too fervent a friend—­she can be.  Generous too, she can be without an effort; and I have had much affection from her—­and accuse myself for seeming to have less—­but—­