something more to him than a stone thrown away. So, if you have thought
severely of him, you and dear Mr. Martin, do not any longer. Preserve
your friendship for him, my dearest friends, and let all this foolish
mistaken past be well past and forgotten. I think him looking thin,
though it does not strike them so in Wimpole Street, certainly.

For the rest, the pleasantness is not on every side. It seemed to me
right, notwithstanding that dear Mr. Kenyon advised against it, to
apprise my father of my being in England. I could not leave England
without trying the possibility of his seeing me once, of his consenting
to kiss my child once. So I wrote, and Robert wrote. A manly, true,
straightforward letter his was, yet in some parts so touching to me and
so generous and conciliating everywhere, that I could scarcely believe
in the probability of its being read in vain. In reply he had a very
violent and unsparing letter, with all the letters I had written to papa
through these five years _sent back unopened, the seals unbroken_. What
went most to my heart was that some of the seals were black with
black-edged envelopes; so that he might have thought my child or husband
dead, yet never cared to solve the doubt by breaking the seal. He said
he regretted to have been forced to keep them by him until now, through
his ignorance of where he should send them. So there's the end. I
cannot, of course, write again. God takes it all into His own hands, and
I wait.

We go on Tuesday. If I do not see you (as I scarcely hope to do now), it
will be only a gladness delayed for a few months. We shall meet in Paris
if we live. May God bless you both, dearest friends! I think of you and
love you. Dear Mr. Martin, don't stay too late in England this year, for
the climate seems to me worse than ever. Not that I have much cough
now--I am much better--but the quality of the atmosphere is unmistakable