'CARO MIO PIERINO,--Are you sure you have an angel? People have a trick of always calling very commonplace women angels. "She is an angel" is a polite way of saying "she is a bore." I am not sure either that I should care to live with a veritable angel. One would see too much of the wings, as you say; and even a guardian angel must be the _terzo incommodo_ sometimes. Why _would_ you marry an English girl? I daresay she is so good-tempered that she never contradicts you, and you grow peevish out of sheer weariness at having everything your own way. If you had married Nicoletta, as I wanted you to do, she would have flown at you, like a little tigress, a dozen times a week, and kept you on the _qui vive_ to please her. We know what our own men want. I have half a mind to write to your wife and tell her that no Italian is comfortable unless he has his ears boxed twice a day. If your wife would be a little disagreeable, probably you would adore her. But it is a great mistake, _Pierino mio_, to confuse marriage and love. In reality, they have no more to do with one another than a horse chestnut and a chestnut horse; than the _zuccone_ that means a vegetable, and the _zuccone_ that means a simpleton. I should imagine that your wet English bird's-nest will force you to realise this truth with lamentable rapidity.' _From the Principessa di San Zenone, Coombe Bysset, Luton, Beds., to Lady Gwendoline Dormer, British Embassy, Vienna._ 'DEAREST GWEN,--I did promise, I know, to write to you at once, and tell you everything; and a whole week is gone and I couldn't do it, I really couldn't; and even now I don't know where to begin. I suppose I am dreadfully _vieux jeu_. I suppose you will only laugh at me, and say "spoons." How glad I am Piero cannot say a word of English, and so I never hear that dreadful jargon which I do think so ugly and so vulgar, though you are all so fond of it. I ought not to have come to Coombe Bysset; at least, they all said it was silly. Nessie Fitzgerald was back in London before the week was out, and doing a play. To be sure she was married in October, and she didn't care a bit about him, and I suppose that made all the difference. To me, it seems so much more natural to shut one's self up, and Piero thought so too; but I am half afraid he finds it a little dull now. You see, we knew very little of one another. He came for a month of the London season, and he met me at Ranelagh, and he danced the cotillon with me at a good many houses, and we cared for one another in a week, and were married in a month, as you know. Papa hated it because it wasn't Lord Burlington or Lord Hampshire. But he couldn't really object, because the San Zenone are such a great Roman family, and all the world knows them; and they are Spanish dukes as well as Italian princes. And Piero is such a grand gentleman, and made quite superb settlements; much more, Papa said, than he could have expected, so poor as we are. But what I meant