But in spite of glimpses of Tennyson, Ruskin, Carlyle, Kenyon, and other friends, the visit to England was, on the whole, a painful one to Mrs.
Browning.

Intercourse with her own family did not run smooth.

One sister was living at too great a distance to see her; the other was kept out of her reach, for a considerable part of the time, by her father.

In addition, a third member of the Barrett family, her brother Alfred, earned excommunication from his father's house by the unforgivable offence of matrimony.

Altogether it was not without a certain feeling of relief that, in the middle of October, Mrs.Browning, with her husband and child, left England for Paris.