who live in the country and care for their own people, also possess. But I was to see much more of Contessa Maria and Roman society in later years, especially when we were at the Villa Barberini and I was writing _Eleanor_, in 1899. Now I will only recall a little saying of the Contessa's at our first meeting, which lodged itself in memory. She did not then talk English fluently, as she afterward came to do; but she was learning English, with her two boys, from a delightful English tutor, and evidently pondering English character and ways--"Ah, you English!"--I can see the white arm and hand, with its cigarette, waving in the darkness of the old Roman apartment; the broad brow, the smiling eyes, and glint of white teeth. "You English! Why don't you _talk_?--why _won't_ you talk? If French people come here, there is no trouble. If I just tear up an envelope and throw down the pieces, they will talk about it a whole evening, and so _well_! But you English!--you begin, and then you stop; one must always start you again--always wind you up!" Terribly true! But in her company, even we halting English learned to talk, in our bad French, or whatever came along. The summer of 1889 was filled with an adventure to which I still look back with unalloyed delight, which provided me, moreover, with the setting and one of the main themes of _Marcella_. We were at that time half-way through the building of a house at Haslemere, which was to supersede Borough Farm. We had grown out of Borough and were for the moment houseless, so far as summer quarters were concerned. And for my work's sake, I felt that eagerness for new scenes and suggestions which is generally present, I think, in the story-teller of all shades. Suddenly, in a house-agent's catalogue, we came across an astonishing advertisement. Hampden House, on the Chiltern Hills, the ancestral home of John Hampden, of ship-money fame, was to let for the summer, and for a rent not beyond our powers. The new Lord Buckinghamshire, who had inherited it, was not then able to live in it. It had, indeed, as we knew, been let for a while, some years earlier, to our old friends, Sir Mountstuart and Lady Grant Duff, before his departure for the Governorship of Madras. The agents reported that it was scantily furnished, but quite habitable; and without more ado we took it! I have now before me the letter in which I reported our arrival, in mid-July, to my husband, detained in town by his _Times_ work.