_From the Principessa di San Zenone, Coombe Bysset, to the Lady Gwendolen Chichester, S. 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, S. Petersburg, to the Principessa di San Zenone, Hotel 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 _cur_ 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 for ever round and round on the axle of its own self-admiration. If you go to Trouville (and wherever else you do go) as a 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._ _'15th July._