was, meeting like that in the rush of the season, at balls and dinners and garden parties, and luncheons at Hurlingham, and being married to one another just before Ascot, we really knew nothing at all of each other's tastes or habits or character. And when, on the first morning at Coombe, we realised that we were together for life, I think we both felt very odd. We adored one another, but we didn't know what to talk about; we never had talked to each other; we never had time. And I am afraid there is something of this feeling with him. I am afraid he is dreadfully bored, and I told him so, and he answered, "My dear little angel, your admirable countrymen are not bored in the country because they are always eating. They eat a big breakfast, they eat a big luncheon, they eat a big dinner, they are always eating. Myself, I have not that resource. Give me a little coffee and a little wine, and let me eat only once a day. You never told me I was expected to absorb continually food like the crocodiles." What would he say if he saw a hunting breakfast in the shires? I suppose life _is_ very material in England. I think it is why there is so much typhoid fever. Do you know, he wasn't going to dress for dinner because we were alone. As if that was any reason! I told him it would look so odd to the servants if he didn't dress, so he has done so since. But he says it was a _seccatura_ (this means, I believe, a bore), and he told me we English sacrifice our whole lives to fuss, form and the outside of things. There is a good deal of truth in this. What numbers of people one knows who are ever so poor, and who yet, for the sake of the look of the thing, get into debt over their ears! And then, quantities of them go to church for the form of the thing, when they don't _believe_ one atom; they will tell you at luncheon that they don't. I fancy Italians are much more honest than we are in this sort of way. Piero says if they are poor, they don't mind saying so, and if they have no religion, they don't pretend to have any. He declares we English spoil all our lives because we fancy it is our duty to pretend to be something we are not. Now, isn't that really very true? I am sure you would delight in all he says. He is so original, so unconventional; our people think him ignorant, because he doesn't read, and doesn't care a straw about politics. But I assure you he is as clever as anything can be; and he doesn't get his ideas out of newspapers; nor repeat like a parrot what his chief of party tells him. I do wish you could have come over and could have seen him. It was so unkind of you to be ill just at the very time of my marriage. You know that it is only to you that I ever say quite what I feel about things. The girls are too young, and Mamma doesn't understand. She never could see why I would not marry poor Hampshire. She always said that I should care for him in time. I don't think Mamma can ever have been in love with anybody. I wonder what