I have been here nearly a month, and I have been almost engaged to three different men. How time does seem to fly! Lily says I am a heartless little flirt. I think that perhaps I was, until he came. He has been here just a week, and I seem to have known him years. Lily seems to be under the impression that I was engaged to Captain Pentland. She is wrong. Captain Pentland has some very noble qualities. He is destined to make some true woman profoundly happy. Of that I have no doubt whatever. But I am not that woman. No, dear mamma, I feel that now. Besides, he wears an eyeglass. As you are aware, I have always had an insuperable objection to an eyeglass. It seems to savour of affectation. And affectation I cannot stand. And then he lisps. As I told you, when I wrote you last, when I sprained my ankle on Highdown Hill, he carried me in his arms for over a mile. Of course, I was grateful. And, between you and me, dear mamma, he held me so very closely to him, that, afterwards I felt as if I ought to marry him. I have explained everything to Charlie. He quite agrees with me that it is absurd for Captain Pentland to think himself ill-used. While I think of it, when you are in town will you tell them to send me a box of assorted chocolates? You know the kind I like. There is nothing of that sort to be had here, and I do so long for some. Charlie is Lily's cousin. Do you think that cousins ought to kiss each other? I wish I could get the opinion of someone on whose judgment I could implicitly rely. At any rate, even supposing that they ought I am quite sure that there should be limits. Before long I am afraid that I shall have to give Charlie a hint that I do not think, under the circumstances, that he ought to kiss Lily quite as much as he does me. She may be his cousin, but she is young, and she is pretty. And cousins are not sisters. It is nonsense for people to pretend they are. The odd part of it is that if Charlie had not been so fond of kissing Lily I might not be going to marry him now. I knew that he was coming. And I was sitting alone in the drawing-room, in a half-light, with my back to the door, when suddenly someone, putting his arm round my waist, lifting me off my feet, twisted me right round, and began kissing me on my eyes and lips and everywhere. I thought it was Captain Pentland. Though I was astonished at such behaviour even from him--because it was only that morning we quarrelled. You may judge of my astonishment when I was again able to look out of my own eyes, to find myself being held, as if I were a baby, or a doll, in the arms of a perfect giant of a man, whom I had never seen before. You may imagine how shocked I felt, because, as you know well, my views on such subjects--which I owe to your dear teaching--are, if anything, too severe. I will do him the justice to admit that he seemed to be almost as much shocked as I was. "I beg your pardon," he said, "ten thousand times. I thought that you were Lily."