The engaged pair had not only not obtained Mr. Barrett's sanction to their marriage; they had not even invoked it; and the doubly clandestine character thus forced upon the union could not be otherwise than repugnant to Mr. Browning's pride; but it was dictated by the deepest filial affection on the part of his intended wife. There could be no question in so enlightened a mind of sacrificing her own happiness with that of the man she loved; she was determined to give herself to him. But she knew that her father would never consent to her doing so; and she preferred marrying without his knowledge to acting in defiance of a prohibition which, once issued, he would never have revoked, and which would have weighed like a portent of evil upon her. She even kept the secret of her engagement from her intimate friend Miss Mitford, and her second father, Mr. Kenyon, that they might not be involved in its responsibility. And Mr. Kenyon, who, probably of all her circle, best understood the case, was grateful to her for this consideration. Mr. Barrett was one of those men who will not part with their children; who will do anything for them except allow them to leave the parental home. We have all known fathers of this type. He had nothing to urge against Robert Browning. When Mr. Kenyon, later, said to him that he could not understand his hostility to the marriage, since there was no man in the world to whom he would more gladly have given his daughter if he had been so fortunate as to possess one,* he replied: 'I have no objection to the young man, but my daughter should have been thinking of another world;' and, given his conviction that Miss Barrett's state was hopeless, some allowance must be made for the angered sense of fitness which her elopement was calculated to arouse in him. But his attitude was the same, under the varying circumstances, with all his daughters and sons alike. There was no possible husband or wife whom he would cordially have accepted for one of them. * Mr. Kenyon had been twice married, but he had no children. Mr. Browning had been willing, even at that somewhat late age, to study for the Bar, or accept, if he could obtain it, any other employment which might render him less ineligible from a pecuniary point of view. But Miss Barrett refused to hear of such a course; and the subsequent necessity for her leaving England would have rendered it useless.