"It's well enough for one's friends to surmise the condition of affairs; no unpleasantness for me results. But let it once become newspaper gossip and my situation among people I most earnestly desire to cultivate would become instantly precarious and perhaps impossible. "It is not necessary for me to inform you what is the very insecure status of an American woman here, particularly in view of the Court's well known state of mind concerning marital irregularities. "The King's views coincide with the Queen's. And the Queen's are perfectly well known. "If you continue your exploring expeditions, which you evidently like to engage in, and if you report here at intervals for the sake of appearances, I can get on very well and very comfortably. But if you settle in New York and engage in business there, and continue to remain away from this country where you are popularly supposed to maintain residences in town and country, I shall certainly begin to experience very disagreeably the consequences of your selfish conduct. "Your reply to my last letter has thoroughly incensed me. "You always have been selfish. From the time I had the misfortune to marry you I had to suffer from your selfish, self-centred, demonstrative, and rather common character--until you finally learned that demonstration is offensive to decent breeding, and that, although I happened to be married to you, I intended to keep to my own notions of delicacy, reserve, privacy, and self-respect. "Of course you thought it a sufficient reason for us to have children merely because _you_ once thought you wanted them; and I shall not forget what was your brutal attitude toward me when I told you very plainly that I refused to be saddled with the nasty, grubby little brats. Evidently you are incapable of understanding any woman who is not half animal. "I did not desire children, and that ought to have been sufficient for you. I am not demonstrative toward anybody; I leave that custom to my servants. And is it any crime if the things that interest and appeal to you do not happen to attract me? "And I'll tell you now that your subjects of conversation always bored me. I make no pretences; I frankly do not care for what you so smugly designate as 'the things of the mind' and 'things worth while.' I am no hypocrite: I like well bred, well dressed people; I like what they do and say and think. Their characters may be negative as you say, but their poise and freedom from demonstration are most agreeable to me.