variety of muddy lanes in which to ride. There is a post-office seven miles off, and a telegraph station fifteen miles further off. The ensemble is not animated. When you go out you see very sleek cattle, very white sheep, very fat children. You may meet, at intervals, labouring people, very round shouldered and very sulky. You also meet, if you are in luck's way, with a traction engine; and wherever you look you perceive a church steeple. It is all very harmless, except the traction engine; but it is not animated or enlivening. You will not wonder that I soon came to the end of my French novels. The French novels have enabled me to discover that my angel is very easily ruffled. In fact, she is that touchy thing—a saint. I had no idea that she was a saint when I saw her drinking her cup of tea in that garden on the Thames. True, she had her lovely little serene, holy, noli me tangere air, but I thought that would pass; it does not pass. And when I wanted her to laugh with me at Gyp's 'Autour du Mariage', she blushed up to the eyes, and was offended. What am I to do? I am no saint. I cannot pretend to be one. I am not worse than other men, but I like to amuse myself. I cannot go through life singing a miserere. I am afraid we shall quarrel. You think that very wholesome. But there are quarrels and quarrels. Some clear the air like thunderstorms. Ours are little irritating differences which end in her bursting into tears, and in myself looking ridiculous and feeling a brute. She has cried quite a number of times in the last fortnight. I daresay if she went into a rage, as you justly say Nicoletta would do, and you might have added you have done, it would rouse me, and I should be ready to strike her, and should end in covering her with kisses. But she only turns her eyes on me like a dying fawn, bursts into tears, and goes out of the room. Then she comes in again—to dinner, perhaps, or to that odd ceremony, five o'clock tea—with her little sad, stiff, reproachful air as of a martyr; answers meekly, and makes me again feel a brute. The English sulk a long time, I think. We are at daggers drawn one moment, but then we kiss and forget the next. We are more passionate, but we are more amiable. I want to get away, to go to Paris, Homburg, Trouville, anywhere; but I dare not propose it. I only drop adroit hints. If I should die of ennui, and be buried under the wet moss for ever, weep for me.'

From the Principessa di San Zenone, Coombe Bysset, to Lady Gwendolen Chichester, S. Petersburg.

'Coombe is quite too lovely now. It does rain sometimes, certainly, but between the showers it is so delicious. I asked Piero to come out and hear the nightingale; there really is one in the home wood, and he laughed at the idea. He said, "We have hundreds of nightingales shouting all day and all night at Lanciano. We don't think about them, we eat them in pasta; they are very good." Fancy eating a nightingale! You might as well eat Romeo and Juliet. Piero has got a number of French books from London, and he lies about on the couches and reads them. He wants me to listen to naughty bits of fun out of them, but I will not, and then he calls me a prude, and gets angry. I don't see why he shouldn't laugh as much as he likes himself without telling me why he laughed. I dislike that sort of thing. I am horribly afraid I shall care for nothing but him all my life, while he—he yawned yesterday! Papa said to me, before we were married, "My dear little girl, San Zenone put on such a lot of steam at first, he'll be obliged to ease his pace after a bit. Don't be vexed if you find the thing cooling!" Now, Papa speaks so oddly; always that sort of floundering, bald metaphor, you remember it; but I knew what he meant. Nobody could go on being such a lover as Piero was. Ah, dear, is it in the past already? No, I don't quite mean that. He is Romeo still very often, and he sings me the divinest love songs, lying at my feet on cushions in the moonlight. But it is not quite the same thing as it was at first. He found fault with one of my gowns this morning, and said I don't know how de me faire valoir. I am terribly frightened lest Coombe has bored him too much. I would come here. I wanted to be utterly out of the world, and so did he; and I'm sure there isn't a lover's nest anywhere comparable to Coombe in midsummer. You remember the rose garden, and the lime avenues, and the chapel ruins by the little lake? When Aunt Carrie offered it to us for this June I was so delighted, but now I am half afraid the choice of it was a mistake, and that he does not know what to do with himself. He is dépaysé. I cried a little yesterday; it was too silly, but I couldn't help it. He laughed at me, but he got a little angry. "Enfin que veux tu?" he said impatiently; "je suis à toi, bien à toi, beaucoup trop à toi!" He seemed to me to regret being mine. I told him so; he was more angry. It was, I suppose, what you would call a scene. In five minutes he was penitent, and caressed me as only he can do; and the sun came out, and we went into the woods and heard the nightingale; but the remembrance of it alarms me. If he can say as much as this in a month, what can he say in a year? I do not think I am silly. I had two London seasons, and all those country houses show one the world. I know people, when they are married, are always glad to get away from one another—they are always flirting with other people. But I should be miserable if I thought it would ever be like that with Piero and me. I worship his very shadow, and he does—or he did—worship mine. Why should that change? Why should it not go on for ever, as it does in poems? If it can't, why doesn't one die?'

From the Lady Gwendolen Chichester, S. Petersburg, to the Principessa di San Zenone, Coombe Bysset.

'What a goose you are, you dearest Gladys! You were always like that. To all you have said I can only reply, connu. When girls are romantic (and you always were, though it was quite gone out ages before our time), they always expect husbands to remain lovers. Now, my pet, you might just as well expect hay to remain grass. Papa was quite right. When there is such a lot of steam on, it must go off by degrees. I am afraid, too, you have begun with the passion, and the rapture, and the mutual adoration, and all the rest of it, which is quite, quite gone out. People don't feel in that sort of way nowadays. Nobody cares much; a sort of good-humoured liking is the utmost one sees. But you were always such a goose! And now you must marry an Italian, and expect it all to be balconies and guitars and moonlight for ever and ever. I think it quite natural he should want to get to Paris. You should never have taken him to Coombe. I do remember the rose gardens, and the lime avenues, and the ruins; and I remember being sent down there when I had too strong a flirtation with Philip Rous, who was in F. O., and had nothing a year. You were a baby then, and I remember that I was bored to the very brink of suicide; that I have detested the smell of a lime tree ever since. I can sympathise with the Prince, if he longs to get away. There can't be anything for him to do, all day long, except smoke. The photo of him is wonderfully handsome, but can you live all your life, my dear, on a profile?'

From the Principessa di San Zenone, Coombe Bysset, to the Lady Gwendolen Chichester, S. Petersburg.

'Because almost all Englishmen have snub noses,