his urgent desire, she declared that she was willing to chain him, rivet him—­“Do you feel how the little fine chain twists round and round you? do you hear the stroke of the riveting?” But the links were of a kind to be loosed if need be at a moment’s notice.  June came, and with it a proposal from a well-intentioned friend, Miss Bayley, to accompany her to Italy, if, by and by, such a change of abode seemed likely to benefit her health.  Miss Barrett was prepared to accept the offer if it seemed right to Browning, or was ready, if he thought it expedient, to wait for another year.  His voice was given, with such decision as was possible, in favour of their adhering to the plan formed for the end of summer; they both felt the present position hazardous and tormenting; to wear the mask for another year would suffocate them; they were “standing on hot scythes.”

Accordingly during the summer weeks there is much poring over guide-books to Italy; much weighing of the merits of this place of residence and of that.  Shall it be Sorrento?  Shall it be La Cava? or Pisa? or Ravenna? or, for the matter of that, would not Seven Dials be as happy a choice as any, if only they could live and work side by side?  There is much balancing of the comparative ease and the comparative cost of routes, the final decision being in favour of reaching Italy by way of France.  And as the time draws nearer there is much searching of time-tables, in the art of mastering which Robert Browning seems hardly to have been an expert.  May Mr Kenyon be told?  Or is it not kinder and wiser to spare him the responsibility of knowing?  Mrs Jameson, who had made a friendly proposal similar to that of Miss Bayley,—­may she be half-told?  Or shall she be invited to join the travellers on their way?  What books shall be brought?  What baggage?  And how may a box and a carpet bag be conveyed out of 50 Wimpole Street with least observation?

It was deeply repugnant to Miss Barrett’s feelings to practise reserve on such a matter as this with her father.  Her happier companion had informed his father and mother of their plans, and had obtained from the elder Mr Browning a sum of money, asked for as a loan rather than a gift, sufficient to cover the immediate expenses of the journey.  Mr Barrett was entitled to all respect, and as for affection he received from his daughter enough to make the appearance of disloyalty to him carry a real pang to her heart.  But she believed that she had virtually no choice; her nerves were not of iron; the roaring of the Great Western express she might face but not an angry father.  A loud voice, and a violent “scene,” such as she had witnessed, until she fainted, when Henrietta was the culprit, would have put an end to the Italian project through mere physical collapse and ruin.  Far better therefore to withdraw quietly from the house, and trust to the effect of a subsequent pleading in all earnestness for reconciliation.

[Illustration:  Yours very truly, Robert Browning. From an engraving by J.G.  ARMYTAGE.]