"I have been in fairyland," said she, shyly, opening her blue eyes upon him. "Nothing can ever be like it again." "No--because one can never be twenty again," said the old man, sighing. "Twenty years hence, you will wonder where the magic came from. Never mind--just now, anyway, the world's your oyster." Then he looked at her a little more closely.... He missed some of that quiver of youth and enjoyment he had felt in her before; and there were some very dark lines under the beautiful eyes. What was wrong? Had she met the man--the appointed one? He began to talk to her with a kindness that was at once simple and stately. "We must all have our ups and downs," he said to her, presently. "Let me just give you a word of advice. It'll carry you through most of them. Remember you are very young, and I shall soon be very old." He stopped and surveyed her. His eyes blinked through their blanched lashes. Lucy dropped her fork and looked back at him with smiling expectancy. "Learn Persian!" said the old man, in an urgent whisper--"and get the dictionary by heart!" Lucy still looked--wondering. "I finished it this morning," said the Ambassador, in her ear. "To-morrow I shall begin it again. My daughter hates the sight of the thing. She says I overtire myself, and that when old people have done their work they should take a nap. But I know that if it weren't for my dictionary I should have given up long ago. When too many tiresome people dine here in the evening--or when they worry me from home--I take a column. But generally half a column's enough--good tough Persian roots, and no nonsense. Oh! of course I can read Hafiz and Omar Khayyam, and all that kind of thing. But that's the whipped cream. That don't count. What one wants is something to set one's teeth in. Latin verse will do. Last year I put half Tommy Moore into hendecasyllables. But my youngest boy, who's at Oxford, said he wouldn't be responsible for them--so I had to desist. And I suppose the mathematicians have always something handy. But, one way or another, one must learn one's dictionary. It comes next to cultivating one's garden." The pretty bit of kindness to a very young girl, in 1892, which I have described, suggested part of this conversation; and I find the foundation of the rest in a letter written to my father from Paris in 1896.