_July 5th._--Mary Layne is going to the Grange as companion to Lady Chavasse. "Humble companion," as my lady takes care to put it. It has been brought about in this way. Wilkins is slightly improving: but it will be months before she can resume her duties about Lady Chavasse: and my lady has at length got this opinion out of me. "Five or six months!" she exclaimed in dismay. "But it is only what I have lately suspected. Mr. Duffham, I have been thinking that I must take a companion; and now this has confirmed it. A humble companion, who will not object to do my hair on state occasions, and superintend Picker in trimming my dresses, especially the lace; and who will write notes for me when I desire it, and read to me when Sir Geoffry's not here; and sit with me if I wish it. She wouldn't dine with us, of course; but I might sometimes let her sit down to luncheon. In short, what I want is a well-educated, lady-like young woman, who will make herself useful. Do you happen to know of one?" I mentioned Mary Layne. She has been wishing not to return to the heavy work and confinement of a school, where she had to sit up late, night after night, correcting exercises, and touching up drawings by gas-light. My lady caught at it at once. "Mary Layne! the very thing. I like the look of the girl much, Mr. Duffham; and of course she won't be above doing anything required of her: Layne, the apothecary's daughter, cannot be called a gentlewoman in position, you know." She forgot I was an apothecary also; I'll give her that credit. But this is a specimen of the way my lady's exclusive spirit peeps out. And so it is settled. And if Miss Mary had been suddenly offered a position in the Royal household, she could not have thought more of it. "Mr. Duffham, I will try my very best to satisfy Lady Chavasse," says she to me, in an ecstasy; "I will do anything and everything required of me: who am I, that I should be above it?" And by the glistening of her sweet brown eyes, and the rose-blush on her cheeks, it would seem that she fancies she is going into fairy-land. Well, the Grange is a nice place: and she is to have thirty guineas a-year. At the last school she had twenty pounds: at the first ten. [_End of the Diary for the present._]