The other lady whom I mentioned is a widow; her name is Gerrarde, and she lives upon a little estate she has in this neighbourhood. I think I never beheld so fine a creature; she is about six and twenty; her stature, which is much above the common size, is rendered perfectly graceful and majestic by one of the finest shapes in the world; if her face is not altogether so regularly beautiful as her person, it is, however, handsome enough to render any woman charming who had nothing else to boast of. Whether her understanding be of a piece with the rest, I have not yet been able to discover. Her visit to me was but short, for she had not sat with me an hour when lady V---- came in, and she then took her leave; but by what I could observe in that little time, she seems to have as much vivacity and agreeable humour, as I ever met with in any one. She pressed me to dine with her at her cottage, as she calls it, to-morrow, and I like her too well to refuse the invitation. These two charming women, I think, I shall single out for my chief intimates, from the crowd which have been to compliment me, on my coming into this country. Mr Arnold is mightily pleased with them both; but he gives the preference to lady V----, whom, tho' he had a slight acquaintance with her lord, he never saw before. But he is almost as great a stranger in this place as I am: he is highly delighted at my having met with people who are likely to render it agreeable to me. _July 21_ We dined to-day according to appointment with Mrs Gerrarde. A cottage she called her house, nor does it appear much better at the outside, but within it is a fairy palace. Never was any thing so neat, so elegant, so perfectly well fansied, as the fitting up of all her rooms. Her bedchambers are furnished with fine chints, and her drawing-room with the prettiest Indian sattin I ever saw. Her little villa is called Ashby, and her husband, she told me, purchased it for her some time before his death, and left it to her; but she has since had a considerable addition to her fortune, by the death of a relation. Our entertainment was splendid almost to profusion, though there was no company but Mr Arnold and I. I told her, if she always gave such dinners, it would frighten me away from her: indeed it was the only circumstance in her whole conduct that did not please me, for I was charmed with the rest of her behaviour. They must surely be of a very churlish disposition, who are not pleased, where a manifest desire to oblige is conspicuous in every word and action. If Mrs. Gerrarde is not as highly polished as some women are, who, perhaps, have had a more enlarged education, she makes full amends for it by a perfect good humour, a sprightliness always entertaining, and a quickness of thought, that gives her conversation an air of something very _like_ wit, and which I dare say passes for the thing itself with most people. _July 24_