* * * * * _From the Princess di San Zenone, Coombe-Bysset, to the Lady Gwendolen Chichester, St. Petersburg._ We are to leave for Paris and Trouville to-morrow. I have yielded, as you and mamma seemed to think it was my _duty_ to do. But my life is over. I shall say farewell to all happiness when the gates of Coombe-Bysset close upon me. Henceforth we shall be like everybody else. However, you cannot reproach me any longer with being selfish, nor can he. There is a great friend of his, the Duchess of Aquila Fulva, at Trouville. She writes to him very often, I know. He never offers to show me her letters. _I believe the choice of Trouville is her doing._ Write to me at Paris, at The Windsor. * * * * * _From the Lady Gwendolen Chichester, St. Petersburg, to the Princess di San Zenone, Hôtel Windsor, Paris._ MY POOR CHILD!-- Has the green-eyed monster already invaded your gentle soul because he doesn't show you his own letters? My dear, no man who was not born a _our_ would show a woman's letters to his wife. Surely you wish your hero to know the A, B, C of gentle manners! I am delighted you are going into the world; but if you only go as "a duty" I am afraid the results won't be sunshiny. "Duty" is such a _very_ disagreeable thing. It always rolls itself up like a hedgehog, with all its prickles out, turning forever round and round on the axle of its own self-admiration. If you go to Trouville, and wherever else you do go, _en martyr_, my dear, you will give the mischievous duchess, if she be mischievous, a terrible advantage over you at starting. If you mean to be silent, unpleasant, and enwrapped in a gloomy contemplation of your own merits and wrongs, don't blame _him_ if he spend his time at the Casino with his friend, or somebody worse. I am quite sure you _mean_ to be unselfish, and you fancy you are so, and all the rest of it, quite honestly; but, in real truth, as I told you before, you are only an egotist. You would rather keep this unhappy Piero on thorns beside you than see him enjoy himself with other people. Now, I call that shockingly selfish; and if you go in that spirit to Trouville he will soon begin to wish, my dear child, that he had never had a fancy to come over to a London season. I can see you so exactly! Too dignified to be cross, too offended to be companionable; silent, reproachful, terrible! * * * * * _From the Lady Mary Bruton, Roches Noires, Trouville, to Mrs. D'Arcy, British Embassy, Berlin._ July 15th.