You are not the sort of person to gossip about such a thing; and when I tell you that what I am going to say is confidential, I simply mean that I would not, for the present at any rate, mention the subject to your daughter; young people are fanciful, and she might misinterpret my meaning--besides why shouldn’t she find it out for herself? No, let this be for you and your husband’s ear alone! And even for you it must be in some sense a barren secret; you cannot stay with yourselves! If you could I should recommend nothing so strongly as a few weeks’ visit to your charming home. It would do your husband all the good in the world--get him out of himself, so to speak--while it would make you a different woman. Not that I think that in any way desirable; I simply avail myself of a phrase that is always applied to me when a change is recommended. Yes! If you could only stay at----! The family is small, but extremely intelligent, with minds well stored with the most varied kinds of knowledge. Your host is a type! Waking--with him--appears to be the momentary interruption of an animated conversation which has engaged the long hours others reserve for sleep. With them a new day seems to open a new volume with cover, title page and preface. Not so with him. The intervening night is simply a semi-colon in an uncompleted sentence--a Wagnerian clause in a melody that repudiates a close. This might seem to argue a too rigid adherence to a single theme with menace of monotony. Yet nothing could be less true. At the bidding of a single word the whole scene changes with the shifting magic of a dream, and you are surprised to find yourself suddenly plunged into quite another conversational sea. I have seen visitors at your house who would turn a deaf ear to these alert exercises of the dawn--moody men who became at once absorbed in the mere pleasures of the table; taking refuge in bacon from arguments to which they could find no auroral reply. They are cowards and I will have none of them! Rather would I emulate the tact of your hostess who finds, and welcomes, in these wide-ranging thoughts of morn, a bulwark that keeps the host from the kitchen boiler. For he is very apt to descend suddenly from his philosophic heights and pounce with unerring precision on some petty domestic error. It is here you may observe the sweet influence of the daughter of the house, whose finesse would almost deserve the name of cunning if its purpose were not so benign. In her skilful hands I have seen disaster averted by a dictionary and an impending storm transferred from a tea-cup to a disputed line of Tennyson. I am painting for you only the lighter moods of life at this charming house; of what else is delightful you must some day go and see for yourself. But I forget; of course you can’t and there is my difficulty staring me in the face. I wonder if it is mine alone?