When Mr. Parnell first came to Eltham he told me that he had had, since his boyhood at school, a habit of sleep-walking whenever he was at all run down in health. {206} When he was in America he used to lock the door of his room and put the key into a box with a spring lock that he had bought for the purpose. He feared he might wander about the hotel in his sleep. Also he warned me, when he first came, that he was subject to "night terrors," very much as a highly strung child is, and in these he would spring up panic-stricken out of deep sleep, and, without fully awaking, try to beat off the imaginary foe that pressed upon him. It was a species of nightmare; not apparently excited by any particular cause other than general want of tone. After a few years of careful dieting I succeeded in freeing him of these painful and most wearing attacks. When the attacks came on I went into his room and held him until he became fully conscious, for I feared that he would hurt himself. They were followed by a profuse perspiration and deep sleep of several hours. He was terribly worried about these nightmares, but I assured him that it was only indigestion in a peculiar form. "You really think so?" he would reply, and when I told him that they would pass off with careful dieting he was reassured, and he followed my directions so implicitly as to diet that he soon proved me right. He became very much run down again after his sister's death, but recovered perfectly, and had no recurrence of these attacks until some years after, when he suffered from a nervous breakdown brought on by overwork. Sir Henry Thompson treated him then, and he quickly recovered. Soon after I met Mr. Parnell I sent to Worcester for some white roses in pots to keep in my hothouse in order to provide my exigeant lover with buttonholes. He loved white roses, he told me, and would not be content with any other flower from me; nor would he wear a rose from {207} my garden, as he said anyone could have those who asked me for them. So I had to keep a constantly blooming company of white roses in my conservatory to provide a buttonhole of ceremony on his speech days, or on other occasions when I wished him to look particularly well. Sometimes we would drive out miles into the country. Keston Common was a favourite resort of ours, and, as we rarely took a servant with us, we would either put up the horse I drove (Dictator, given to me by Mr. Parnell) at some inn, or tie him to a tree while we wandered about or sat under the trees talking.