Your beloved Olga is back, but I haven’t seen her yet. I asked Signor Cortese to dine and meet her one night, and I asked her to meet him. I thought that would make a pleasant little party, but they were both engaged. I hope they have not quarrelled. Her house, just opposite mine, looks very tiny, but I daresay it is quite large enough for her and her husband. She sings at the opening night of the Opera next week, in “Lucrezia.” I must manage to go even if I can only look in for an act or two. Pepino (so extravagant of him) has taken a box for two nights in the week. It is his birthday present to me, so I couldn’t scold the dear! And after all, we shall give a great deal of pleasure to friends, by letting them have it when we do not want it ourselves. Love to everybody at dear Riseholme. I feel quite like an exile, and sometimes I long for its sweet peace and quietness. But there is no doubt that London suits Pepino very well, and I must make the best of this incessant hustle. I had hoped to get down for next Sunday, but Mrs. Garroby-Ashton (I hear he will certainly be raised to the peerage when the birthday honours come out) has made a point of our spending it with them.... Good-night, dear Georgino. Me so so sleepy. LUCIA. Georgie swallowed this letter at a gulp, and then, beginning again, took it in sips. At first it gave him an impression of someone wholly unlike her, but when sipped, every sentence seemed wonderfully characteristic. She was not adapting herself to new circumstances, she was adapting new circumstances to herself with all her old ingenuity and success, and with all her invincible energy. True, you had sometimes to read between the lines, and divide everything by about three in order to allow for exaggerations, and when Lucia spoke of not disappointing dearest Aggie, who had set her heart on presenting her at Court, or of Mrs. Garroby-Ashton making a point of her going down for the week-end which she had intended to spend at Riseholme, Georgie only had to remember how she had been forced (so she said) to be Queen at those May Day revels. By sheer power of will she had made each of them become a Robin Hood or a Maid Marian, or whatever it was, and then, when she had got them all at work she said it was she who was being worked to death over _their_ May Day revels. They had forced her to organize them, they had insisted that she should be Queen, and lead the dances and sing louder than anybody, and be crowned and curtsied to. They had been wax in her hands, and now in new circumstances, Georgie felt sure that dearest Aggie had been positively forced to present her, and no doubt Mrs. Garroby-Ashton, cornered on that terrace of the House of Commons, while sweet Thames flowed softly, had had no choice but to ask her down for a Sunday.