attentions which were paid to her by some graceful pathetic gesture of
the left hand; but she retained her sensibilities to the last; and Miss
Browning received on one occasion a serious lesson in the risk of ever
assuming that the appearance of unconsciousness guarantees its reality.
Lady Augusta Bruce had asked her, in her mother's presence, how Mrs.
Browning was; and, imagining that Lady Elgin was unable to hear or
understand, she had answered with incautious distinctness, 'I am afraid
she is very ill,' when a little sob from the invalid warned her of her
mistake. Lady Augusta quickly repaired it by rejoining, 'but she is
better than she was, is she not?' Miss Browning of course assented.

There were other friends, old and new, whom Mr. Browning occasionally
saw, including, I need hardly say, the celebrated Madame Mohl. In the
main, however, he led a quiet life, putting aside many inducements to
leave his home.

Mrs. Browning was then writing 'Aurora Leigh', and her husband must have
been more than ever impressed by her power of work, as displayed by her
manner of working. To him, as to most creative writers, perfect quiet
was indispensable to literary production. She wrote in pencil, on
scraps of paper, as she lay on the sofa in her sitting-room, open to
interruption from chance visitors, or from her little omnipresent son;
simply hiding the paper beside her if anyone came in, and taking it
up again when she was free. And if this process was conceivable in the
large, comparatively silent spaces of their Italian home, and amidst
habits of life which reserved social intercourse for the close of the
working day, it baffles belief when one thinks of it as carried on
in the conditions of a Parisian winter, and the little 'salon' of the
apartment in the Rue du Colisee in which those months were spent. The
poem was completed in the ensuing summer, in Mr. Kenyon's London house,