My dear Friend,--I well know you feel as you say, for her once and for me now. Isa Blagden, perfect in all kindness to me, will have told you something perhaps--and one day I shall see you and be able to tell you myself as much as I can. The main comfort is that she suffered very little pain, none beside that ordinarily attending the simple attacks of cold and cough she was subject to--had no presentiment of the result whatever, and was consequently spared the misery of knowing she was about to leave us; she was smilingly assuring me she was 'better', 'quite comfortable--if I would but come to bed,' to within a few minutes of the last. I think I foreboded evil at Rome, certainly from the beginning of the week's illness--but when I reasoned about it, there was no justifying fear--she said on the last evening 'it is merely the old attack, not so severe a one as that of two years ago--there is no doubt I shall soon recover,' and we talked over plans for the summer, and next year. I sent the servants away and her maid to bed--so little reason for disquietude did there seem. Through the night she slept heavily, and brokenly--that was the bad sign--but then she would sit up, take her medicine, say unrepeatable things to me and sleep again. At four o'clock there were symptoms that alarmed me, I called the maid and sent for the doctor. She smiled as I proposed to bathe her feet, 'Well, you _are_ determined to make an exaggerated case of it!' Then came what my heart will keep till I see her again and longer--the most perfect expression of her love to me within my whole knowledge of her. Always smilingly, happily, and with a face like a girl's--and in a few minutes she died in my arms; her head on my cheek. These incidents so sustain me that I tell them to her beloved ones as their right: there was no lingering, nor acute pain, nor consciousness of separation, but God took her to himself as you would lift a sleeping child from a dark, uneasy bed into your arms and the light. Thank God. Annunziata thought by her earnest ways with me, happy and smiling as they were, that she must have been aware of our parting's approach--but she was quite conscious, had words at command, and yet did not even speak of Peni, who was in the next room. Her last word was when I asked 'How do you feel?' --'Beautiful.' You know I have her dearest wishes and interests to attend to _at once_--her child to care for, educate, establish properly; and my own life to fulfil as properly,--all just as she would require were she here. I shall leave Italy altogether for years--go to London for a few days' talk with Arabel--then go to my father and begin to try leisurely what will be the best for Peni--but no more 'housekeeping' for me, even with my family. I shall grow, still, I hope--but my root is taken and remains. I know you always loved her, and me too in my degree. I shall always be grateful to those who loved her, and that, I repeat, you did.