Page:Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Ingram, 5th ed.).djvu/131

Rh than our friend of Three Mile Cross, who 'wears her heart upon her sleeve,' and shakes out its perfumes at every moment. She—Mrs. Jameson—is keen and calm, and reflective. She has a very light complexion—pale, lucid eyes—thin, colourless lips—fit for incisive meanings—a nose and chin projective without breadth. She was here nearly an hour, and, though on a first visit, I could perceive that a vague thought or expression she would not permit to pass either from my lips or her own. Yet nothing could be greater than her kindness to me, and I already think of her as a friend."

When once Miss Barrett had permitted anyone to gain the sanctuary of her presence she became, if the visitant satisfied her expectations, a firm friend and a trusty believer in the entire goodness of the new addition to her limited circle. Mrs. Jameson came as the authoress of several well-known works; as a woman who had suffered, and as a distinguished woman who earnestly sought her acquaintance. These qualifications bore fruit, and a close intimacy was the result. "This early period of their acquaintance," says Mrs. Jameson's biographer, "produced a multitude of tiny notes in fairy handwriting, such as Miss Barrett was wont to indite to her friends, and which are still in existence. Some of these are most charming and characteristic, and illustrate the rise and rapid increase of a friendship that never faltered or grew cool from that time up to the death of Mrs. Jameson."

One of these characteristic little notes, quoted by the biographer, alludes, in Miss Barrett's usual humorously exaggerated style, to her loss of voice, and the inconveniences resulting from it. "I am used to lose my voice and find it again," says Miss Barrett,