Now write and tell me everything of your plans and of you both, dearest friends. My husband bids me say that he desires to have my friends for his own friends, and that he is grateful to you for not crossing that feeling. Let him send his regards to you. And let me be throughout all changes, Your ever faithful and most affectionate BA. I am expecting every day to hear from my dearest sisters. Write to them and love them for me. This letter has been kept for several days from different causes. Will you inclose the little note to Miss Mitford? I do not hear from home, and am uneasy. May God bless you! November 9. I am so vexed about those poems appearing just now in 'Blackwood.'[150] Papa must think it _impudent_ of me. It is unfortunate. [Footnote 150: _Blackwood's Magazine_ for October 1846 contained the following poems by Mrs. Browning, some phrases in which might certainly be open to comment if they were supposed to have been deliberately chosen for publication at this particular time: 'A Woman's Shortcomings,' 'A Man's Requirements,' 'Maude's Spinning,' 'A Dead Rose,' 'Change on Change,' 'A Reed,' and 'Hector in the Garden.'] _To Miss Mitford_ [Pisa]: November 5, 1846. I have your letter, ever dearest Miss Mitford, and it is welcome even more than your letters have been used to be to me--the last charm was to come, you see, by this distance. For all your affection and solicitude, may you trust my gratitude; and if you love me a little, I love you indeed, and never shall cease. The only difference shall be that two may love you where one did, and for my part I will answer for it that if you could love the poor one you will not refuse any love to the other when you come to know him. I never could bear to speak to you of _him_ since quite the beginning, or rather I never could dare. But when you know him and understand how the mental gifts are scarcely half of him, you will not wonder at your friend, and, indeed, two years of steadfast affection from such a man would have, overcome any woman's heart. I have been neither much wiser nor much foolisher than all the shes in the world, only much happier--the difference is in the happiness. Certainly I am not likely to repent of having given myself to him. I cannot, for all the pain received from another quarter, the comfort for which is that my conscience is pure of the sense of having broken the least known duty, and that the same consequence would follow any marriage of any member of my family with any possible man or woman. I look to time, and reason, and natural love and pity, and to the justification of the events acting through all; I look on so and hope, and in the meanwhile it has been a great comfort to have had not merely the indulgence but the approbation and sympathy of most of my old personal friends--oh, such kind letters; for instance, yesterday one came from dear Mrs. Martin, who has known me, she and her husband, since the very beginning of my womanhood, and both of