She was an invalid, and an invalid of a somewhat unique kind, and living beyond all question under very unique circumstances.
Her father, Edward Moulton Barrett, had been a landowner in the West Indies, and thus, by a somewhat curious coincidence, had borne a part in the same social system which stung Browning's father into revolt and renunciation.

The parts played by Edward Barrett, however, though little or nothing is known of it, was probably very different.

He was a man Conservative by nature, a believer in authority in the nation and the family, and endowed with some faculties for making his conceptions prevail.

He was an able man, capable in his language of a certain bitter felicity of phrase.

He was rigidly upright and responsible, and he had a capacity for profound affection.