her; she never feebly condoned weaknesses; her observation of
people was minute, her judgment of them severe and even satirical.
Her letters abound in pungent humour and acute perception; and her
idea of charity was not that of mild and muddled tolerance. She had
a vein of frank and rather bitter irony when she was indignant, and
she could return stroke for stroke.

She knew well that, whatever life was meant to be, it was not
intended to be an easy business; but she did not face it stoically
or indifferently; she had a fierce desire for knowledge, culture,
ideas; she was ambitious; and above everything she desired to be
loved; yet she did not think of love in the way in which all
English romancers had treated it for over a century, as a
condescending hand held out by a superior being, for the glory of
which a woman submitted to a more or less contented servitude; but
as a glowing equality of passion and worship, in which two hearts
clasped each other close, with a sacred concurrence of soul. And
thus it was that she and Robert Browning, above all other writers
of the century, put the love of man and woman in the true light, as
the supreme worth of life; not as a half-sensuous excitement, with
lapses and reactions, but as a great and holy mystery of devotion
and service and mutual help. She too had her little taste of love.
Mr. Nicholls, her father's curate, a man of deep tenderness behind
his quiet homely ways, had proposed to her; she had refused him;
but his suffering and bewilderment had touched her deeply, and at
last she consented, though she went to her wedding in fear and
dread; but she was rewarded, and for a few short months tasted a
calm and sweet happiness, the joy of being needed and desired, and
at the same time guarded and tended well. Her pathetic words, when
she knew from his lips that she must die, "God will not part us--we