R.B.

_E.B.B. to R.B._

Wednesday.
[Post-mark, September 18, 1845.]

Of course you cannot do otherwise than go with your sister--or it will
be 'Every man _out_ of his humour' perhaps--and you are not so very
'savage' after all.

On Monday then, if you do not hear--to the contrary.

Papa has been walking to and fro in this room, looking thoughtfully
and talking leisurely--and every moment I have expected I confess,
some word (that did not come) about Pisa. Mr. Kenyon thinks it cannot
end so--and I do sometimes--and in the meantime I do confess to a
little 'savageness' also--at heart! All I asked him to say the other
day, was that he was not displeased with me--_and he wouldn't_; and
for me to walk across his displeasure spread on the threshold of the
door, and moreover take a sister and brother with me, and do such a
thing for the sake of going to Italy and securing a personal
advantage, were altogether impossible, obviously impossible! So poor
Papa is quite in disgrace with me just now--if he would but care for
_that_!

May God bless you. Amuse yourself well on Saturday. I could not see
you on Thursday any way, for Mr. Kenyon is here every day ... staying
in town just on account of this Pisa business, in his abundant
kindness.... On Monday then.

Ever yours,

E.B.B.

_R.B. to E.B.B._

Thursday Morning.
[Post-mark, September 18, 1845.]

But you, too, will surely want, if you think me a rational creature,
_my_ explanation--without which all that I have said and done would be
pure madness, I think. It _is_ just 'what I see' that I _do_ see,--or
rather it has proved, since I first visited you, that the reality was
infinitely worse than I know it to be ... for at, and after the
writing of _that first letter_, on my first visit, I believed--through
some silly or misapprehended talk, collected at second hand too--that
your complaint was of quite another nature--a spinal injury
irremediable in the nature of it. Had it been _so_--now speak for
_me_, for what you hope I am, and say how _that_ should affect or
neutralize what you _were_, what I wished to associate with myself in
you? But _as you now are_:--then if I had married you seven years ago,
and this visitation came now first, I should be '