You are quite in the wrong, my poor pet. If you were only a little older, and ever so much wiser, you would have telegraphed to the libraries yourself for the French books; you would have laughed at them when he laughed, and, instead of taking Mr. John Best as a tragedy, you would have made him into a little burlesque, which would have amused your husband for five minutes as much as Gyp or Jean Richepin. I begin to think I should have married your Roman prince, and you should have married my good, dull George, whom a perverse destiny has shoved into diplomacy. Your Roman scandalizes you, and my George bores me. Such is marriage, my dear, all the world over. What is the old story? That Jove broke all the walnuts, and each half is always uselessly seeking its fellow. * * * * * _From the Princess di San Zenone, Coombe-Bysset, Luton, Bedfordshire, to the Lady Gwendolin Chichester, British Embassy, St. Petersburg._ But, surely, if he loved me, he would be as perfectly happy with me alone as I am with him alone. I want no other companion, no other interest, no other thought. * * * * * _From the Lady Gwendolen Chichester, British Embassy, St. Petersburg, to the Princess di San Zenone, Coombe-Bysset, Luton, Bedfordshire._ Of course you do not, because you are a woman. San Zenone is your god, your idol, your ideal, your universe. But _you_ are only one out of the many women who have pleased him, and attached to the pleasure you afford him is the very uncomfortable conviction that he will never be able to get away from you. My dear child, I have no patience with any woman when she says, "He does not love me." If he does not, it is probably the woman's fault. Probably she has worried him. Love dies directly it is worried, quite naturally. Poor Gladys! You were always such a good child; you were always devoted to your old women, and your queer little orphans, and your pet cripples, and your East End missions. It certainly is hard that you should have fallen into the hands of a soulless Italian, who reads naughty novels all day long and sighs for the flesh-pots of Egypt! But, my child, in reason's name, what did you expect? Did you think that all in a moment he would sigh to hear Canon Farrar or Dean Liddell, take his guitar to a concert in Seven Dials, and teach Italian to Bethnal Green babies? Be reasonable, and let your poor caged bird fly out of Coombe-Bysset, which will certainly be your worst enemy if you shut him up in it much longer. * * * * * _From the Prince di San Zenone, Coombe-Bysset, to the Duchessa dell'Aquila Fulva, Palazzo Fulva, Milano._