slight honour, properly considered!--And this is _my_
way of laughing, dearest Ba, when the excess of belief in you, and
happiness with you, runs over and froths if it don't
sparkle--underneath is a deep, a sea not to be moved. But chance,
chance! there is _no_ chance here! I _have_ gained enough for my life,
I can only put in peril the gaining more than enough. You shall change
altogether my dear, dearest love, and I will be happy to the last
minute on what I can remember of this past year--I _could_ do that.
_Now_, jump with me out, Ba! If you feared for yourself--all would be
different, sadly different--But saying what you do say, promising 'the
strength of arm'--do not wonder that I call it an assurance of all
being 'well'! All is _best_, as you promise--dear, darling Ba!--and I
say, in my degree, with all the energy of my nature, _as you say_,
promise as you promise--only meaning a worship of you that is solely
fit for me, fit by position--are not you my 'mistress?' Come, some
good out of those old conventions, in which you lost faith after the
Bower's disappearance, (it was carried by the singing angels, like the
house at Loretto, to the Siren's isle where we shall find it preserved
in a beauty 'very rare and absolute')--is it not right you should be
my Lady, my Queen? and you are, and ever must be, dear Ba. Because I
am suffered to kiss the lips, shall I ever refuse to embrace the feet?
and kiss lips, and embrace feet, love you _wholly_, my Ba! May God
bless you--

Ever your own,

R.

It would be easy for Mr. Buckingham to find a Merchant-ship bound for
some Mediterranean port, after a week or two in harbour, to another
and perhaps a third--Naples, Palermo, Syra, Constantinople, and so on.
The expense would be very trifling, but the want of comfort _enormous_
for an invalid--the one advantage is the solitariness of the _one_
passenger among all those rough new creatures. _I_ like it much, and
soon get deep into their friendship, but another has other ways of
viewing matters. No one article provided by the ship in the way of
provisions can anybody touch. Mr. B. must lay in his own stock, and
the horrors of dirt and men's ministry are portentous, yet by a little
arrangement beforehand much might be done. Still, I only know my own
powers of endurance, and counsel nobody to gain my experience. On the
other hand, were a