as we can.  Dearest Sarianna, you can look behind and before, on blessed memories and holy hopes—­love is as full for you as ever in the old relation, even though her life in the world is cut off.  There is no drop of bitterness in all this flood of sorrow.  In the midst of the great anguish which God has given, you have to thank Him for some blessing with every pang as it comes.  Never was a more beautiful, serene, assuring death than this we are all in tears for—­for, believe me, my very dear sister, I have mourned with you, knowing what we all have lost, I who never saw her nor shall see her until a few years shall bring us all together to the place where none mourn nor are parted.  Sarianna, will it not be possible, do you think, for you and your father to come here, if only for a few months?  Then you might decide on the future upon more knowledge than you have now.  It would be comfort and joy to Robert and me if we could all of us live together henceforward.  Think what you would like, and how you would best like it.  Your living on even through this summer at that house, I, who have well known the agony of such bindings to the rack, do protest against.  Dearest Sarianna, it is not good or right either for you or for your dear father.  For Robert to go back to that house unless it were to do one of you some good, think how it would be with him!  Tell us now (for he yearns towards you—­we both do), what is the best way of bringing us all together, so as to do every one of us some good?  If Florence is too far off, is there any other place where we could meet and arrange for the future?  Could not your dear father’s leave of absence be extended this summer, out of consideration of what has happened, and would he not be so enabled to travel with you and meet us somewhere?  We will do anything.  For my part, I am full of anxiety; and for Robert, you may guess what his is, you who know him.  Very bitter has it been to me to have interposed unconsciously as I have done and deprived him of her last words and kisses—­very bitter—­and nothing could be so consolatory to me as to give him back to you at least.  So think for me, dearest Sarianna—­think for your father and yourself, think for Robert—­and remember that Robert and I will do anything which shall appear possible to you.  May God bless you, both of you!  Give my true love to your father.  Feeling for you and with you always and most tenderly, I am your affectionate sister, BA.

To Miss Mitford Florence:  April 30, 1849.

I am writing to you, at last, you will say, ever dearest Miss Mitford; but, except once to Wimpole Street, this is the first packet of letters which goes from me since my confinement.  You will have heard how our joy turned suddenly into deep sorrow by the death of my husband’s mother.  An unsuspected disease (ossification of the heart) terminated in a fatal way, and she lay in the insensibility precursive of the grave’s, when the letter, written in such