think she believes that the end of the world has come. Piero calls Toniello "_figliolo mio_" and "_caro mio_," just as if they were cousins or brothers. It appears this is the Italian way. They are very proud in their own fashion, but it isn't our fashion. However, I am glad the man is there when I hear the click of the billiard balls, and the splash of the raindrops on the window panes. "We have been here just three weeks. _Dio!_ It seems three years," Piero said, when I reminded him of it this morning. For me, I don't know whether it is like a single day's dream or a whole eternity. You know what I mean. But I wish--I wish--it seemed either the day's dream or the eternity of Paradise to him! I daresay it is all my fault in coming to these quiet, bay-windowed, Queen Anne rooms, and the old-fashioned servants, and the dreary look-out over the drenched hay-fields. But the sun does come out sometimes, and then the wet roses smell so sweet, and the wet lime blossoms glisten in the light, and the larks sing overhead, and the woods are so green and so fresh. Still, I don't think he likes it even then, it is all too moist, too windy, too dim for him. When I put a rose in his button-hole this morning, it shook the drops over him, and he said, "_Mais quel pays!--même une fleur c'est une douche d'eau froide!_" Last month, if I had put a dandelion in his coat, he would have sworn it had the odour of the magnolia and the beauty of the orchid! It is just twenty-two days ago since we came here, and for the first four or five days, he never cared whether it rained or not; he only cared to lie at my feet, really, literally. We were all in all to each other, just like Cupid and Psyche. And now--he will play billiards with Toniello to pass the time, and he is longing for his _petits théâtres_! Is it my fault? I torment myself with a thousand self-accusations. Is it possible I can have been tiresome, dull, over-exacting? Is it possible he can be disappointed in me?' _From the Lady Gwendolen Chichester, S. Petersburg, to the Principessa di San Zenone, Coombe Bysset._