I have, however, some really nice friends here, and am not entirely discontented. Mr. Gerald Balfour left the other day. He is very clever--and quite beautiful--like a young god. I wonder if you know him. I know you know Arthur.... Lionel Tennyson, who was also here with Gerald Balfour, has a splendid humor--witty and "fin," which is rare in England. Lord Houghton, Alfred Lyttelton, Godfrey Webb, George Curzon, the Chesterfields, the Hayters, Mary Gladstone, and a lot more have been here. I went north, too, to the land of Thule and was savagely happy. I wore no hat--no gloves--I bathed, fished, boated, climbed, and kissed the earth, and danced round a cairn. It was opposite Skye at a Heaven called Loch Ailsa.... Such beauty--such weather--such a fortnight will not come again. Perhaps it would be unjust to the crying world for one human being to have more of the Spirit of Delight; but one is glad to have tasted of the cup, and while it was in my hands I drank deeply. I have read very little. I am hungering for a month or two's silence. But there was another lover than the west wind waiting for this most lovable of mortals. A few days afterward she wrote to me from a house in Hampshire, where many of her particular friends were gathered, among them Alfred Lyttelton. The conversation is pyrotechnic--and it is all quite delightful. A beautiful place--paradoxical arguments--ideals raised and shattered--temples torn and battered--temptations given way to--newspapers unread--acting--rhyming--laughing--_ad infinitum_. I wish you were here! Six weeks afterward she was engaged to Mr. Lyttelton. She was to be married in May, and in Easter week of that year we met her in Paris, where she was buying her trousseau, enjoying it like a child, making friends with all her dressmakers, and bubbling over with fun about it. "It isn't 'dressing,'" she said, "unless you apply main force to them. What they _want_ is always--_presque pas de corsage, et pas du tout de manches!_" One day she and Mr. Lyttelton and Mr. Balfour and one or two others came to tea with us at the Hotel Chatham to meet Victor Cherbuliez. The veteran French novelist fell in love with her, of course, and their talk--Laura's French was as spontaneous and apparently as facile as her English--kept the rest of us happy. Then she married in May, with half London to see, and Mr. Gladstone--then Prime Minister--mounted on the chair to make the wedding-speech. For by her marriage Laura became the great man's niece, since Alfred Lyttelton's mother was a sister of Mrs. Gladstone.