CHAPTER VII.
Thus in quiet happiness lived in their pleasant Italian home the two poets, Robert and Elizabeth Browning. They continued to write their immortal poems, cheered by each other's society, but published little or nothing, and saw little of the outer world. Few Englishmen found their way into the interior of Casa Guidi, the majority of visitors still being Americans and Italians. Mrs. Browning continued to correspond with Miss Mitford and other friends in both New and Old England, and she repeatedly alluded to her domestic happiness, the only cloud which now rested upon her life, save perhaps her chronic constitutional delicacy, being the rupture with her father. He appears never to have forgiven her for her marriage, and persistently refused to open her letters or even to allow her name to be mentioned to him.
An event was about to happen, however, to draw the poet pair still closer together and to still further wean the poetess from the painful memories of the "sofa and silence" of her old home. On the 8th February 1849, Miss Mitford received a letter from
