Unhappily, I was absent for a few days at Siena, and returned to be met by the intelligence that she was dead.

It seemed the more sad in that I knew that if I had been there I could have made her call a doctor before it was too late.

Browning could also have done so; but it was after the death of Mrs.Browning and his departure from Florence.
How great her sorrow was for the death of her friend, Browning knew, doubtless, but nobody else, I think, in the world save myself.
I have now before me one of her little scraps of letters, in which she encloses one from Mrs.Browning which is of the highest interest.

The history and genesis of it is as follows.

Shortly after the publication of the well-known and exquisite little poem on the god Pan in the _Cornhill Magazine_, my brother Anthony wrote me a letter venturing to criticise it, in which he says: "The lines are very beautiful, and the working out of the idea is delicious.