Miss Blagden followed them, and also young Lytton came, ailing, it was thought, from exposure to the sun.

His indisposition soon grew serious and declared itself as a gastric fever.

For eight nights Isa Blagden sat by his bedside as nurse; for eight other nights Browning took her place.

His own health remained vigorous.

Each morning he bathed in a rapid mountain stream; each evening and morning he rode a mountain pony; and in due time he had the happiness of seeing the patient, although still weak and hollow cheeked, convalescent and beginning to think of "poems and apple puddings," as Mrs Browning declares, "in a manner other than celestial." It had been a summer, she said in September, full of blots, vexations, anxieties.