He put me down very much as you handle your Chelsea cups, mamma--softly and delicately, as if he had been afraid of chipping pieces off me. "I suppose you're Charlie?" I spoke more lightly and more cheerfully than I felt. He seemed so ashamed of himself, and so confused, that I pitied him. You know, dear mamma, that when people know, and feel, that they have done wrong, I always pity them. I cannot help it. It is my nature. All flesh is weak. I myself am prone to err. When Lily did appear, we were talking quite as if we knew each other. And that is how it began. It is odd how these sort of things sometimes do begin. As you are aware, I speak as one who has had experience. I shall always believe that it was only the breaking of a shoelace which first brought Norman Eliot and me together. But those chapters in my life are closed. In the days which are past I may have seemed to hesitate, to occasionally have changed my mind. But now my life is linked to Charlie's by bonds which never shall be broken. I feel as if I were already married. The gravity of existence is commencing to weigh upon my mind. A woman when she is nearly twenty is no longer young. While I remember it, when you send the chocolates don't send any walnuts. I am sick of them. Variously flavoured creams are what I really like. And let two pairs of the stockings be light blue, with bronze stripes high up the leg. I cannot truly say that Lily is behaving to me quite nicely in my relations with Charlie. I do not wish to wrong her, even in my thoughts--she is the very dearest friend I have!--but, sometimes, I cannot help thinking that she had an eye on Charlie for herself. Because when the other morning I was telling her how strongly I disapproved of cousins marrying, if she had not been Lily--whose single-hearted affection I have every faith in--I should have said that she was positively rude. Charlie only proposed to me last night, yet, although she must have seen what was coming, in the afternoon she was actually talking to me of Norman Eliot--as if I had been to blame! Mr. Eliot and I never really were engaged--some people jump to conclusions without proper justification. And am I compelled to answer a person's letters if, for reasons of my own--quite private reasons--I do not choose to? She came to my bedroom last night, just as I was going to bed. I told her what Charlie had said, and what I had said. Of course I expected her to congratulate me--as, in circumstances such as mine, a girl's best friend ought to do. She heard me to an end, and she looked at me, and said: "So you've done it again." "I don't know about again, dear Lily," I replied. "But it would seem as if I had done it at last. I am feeling so happy that it almost makes me afraid." "Some girls would feel afraid if they had reason to be conscious of the fact that they had engaged themselves to marry three men at once."