MY DEAR MISS DE ROCHEMONT: Much to my surprise and annoyance I have this moment found an invitation which I thought had been mailed to you several days ago. It must have slipped out of the other notes some way and has been lying under some papers here on my desk ever since. Can you forgive this mischance and accept so tardy an invitation? It will give us all the greatest pleasure to see you at half after eight. I especially want to introduce to you a cousin of mine just returned from the other side. She has been in college all her life, and I want her to meet some of our most charming society girls to rub her shyness off and make her take more interest in social life. Perhaps you may convert her! Hoping that no previous engagement will prevent our seeing you Thursday, Most sincerely yours, ELEANOR MORRISON. _Mrs. Olmsted Morrison to Mrs. Franklin Bennett, care of Brown, Shipley & Co., London._ November 25th. MY DEAR ALMA: What a surprise! I can scarcely collect my thoughts sufficiently to write intelligently on the subject. I really was never more surprised in all my life--more intensely and thoroughly surprised. But I must try and tell you connectedly all about it. To begin with--Helen did not come on the twentieth as we had expected, but telegraphed us that she was detained in Boston and would not reach Baltimore until the morning of the twenty-fourth. This was very annoying, as I was most anxious about her gown for the dinner, and then I imagined that she would be utterly dragged out after travelling all night. Dear Eleanor would have been, I am quite sure. But Helen seems to be one of those distressingly healthy people--no nerves, no sensitiveness. She quite laughed when I asked her if she were not tired! Well--she came on the eleven-five train, and, Alma, she is not at all the kind of person I had expected. She is even handsome after a certain style of her own--not one that I admire--not at all Eleanor’s style. But certainly it could be much worse. The men even seemed to find her quite good-looking. She has certainly preserved her complexion wonderfully well--and as for her being short-sighted! Between ourselves I am sure it is only an excuse for using a very beautiful lorgnon, and for looking rather intently at one in a sort of meditative way which I consider rather offensive, but which Percy Beaufort told me he found most attractive. He is very disappointing, by the way; I had expected so much of him, but I find him quite an ordinary young man.