26 Devonshire Street: Wednesday, [September 1851].

My dearest Mrs. Martin,--I write in haste to you to tell you some things
which you should hear without delay.

After Robert's letter to George had been sent three times to Wales and
been returned twice, it reached him, and immediately upon its reaching
him (to do George justice) he wrote a kind reply to apprise us that he
would be at our door the same evening. So the night before last he came,
and we are all good friends, thank God. I tenderly love him and the
rest, and must for ever deplore that such poor barriers as a pedantic
pride can set up should have interposed between long and strong and holy
affections for years. But it is past, and I have been very happy in
being held in his arms again, and seen in his eyes that I was still
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
to my lungs and air passages, and I believe it will be wise, on this
account, to go away quickly.

Your ever affectionate and grateful
BA.