She had the greatest horror of evil-speaking and slandering. I was present once when somebody told an ugly story about a young married couple. She turned upon the speaker with withering scorn, and her eyes flashed as she said: “Why can’t you leave them alone? If you must abuse somebody abuse us old people. Don’t help to destroy any chance that the young ones may have of being happy. Besides, how do you know that you are not lending a hand in spreading a lie?” And so she crushed the pedlar of scandal, who had to carry his pack elsewhere. I cannot remember whether her description of the violoncellist—a sly hit at her friend, the famous Piatti—who “bore his cross meekly in a world too much peopled with amateurs,” has ever been printed; even so it is worth repeating. One evening there was a discussion as to the relative advantages of married and unmarried life. She remained silent until a great friend of hers—an old bachelor—stuck up stoutly for the freedom of the unmarried. Then very softly she said: “Poor fellow! with nothing better to go home to than a flat candlestick!” One night towards the end of May I was at the theatre with Charles Dickens and old Lady Molesworth. Just we three in a private box. Between the acts we had great fun. Dickens was in high spirits, brim-full of the _joie de vivre_. His talk had all the sparkle of champagne, and he himself kept laughing at the majesty of his own absurdities, as one droll thought followed another. He was not always in such a vein, for if he thought he was being lionized he would sit mumchance; but he really liked the old lady and of course I did not count; so he was at his ease and at his very best, so bright, so merry and—like his books—so human. During the evening Lady Molesworth insisted on his naming a night to go and dine with her. The date was fixed and on the following day the invitations came out for a day in June. Alas! That dinner never came off, for on the 9th of June, two or three days before the night agreed upon, the whole English-speaking world was stricken with grief. Dickens was lying dead at his beloved Gad’s Hill. It seemed impossible. He had been so brilliant that night. He was only fifty-eight years of age, twenty years younger than I am at this time of writing, and though we knew that he suffered terribly from exhaustion after his readings, which seemed to sap all his energy, undermined as it had been by the strain of many troubles, added to hard and incessant work, he was at times still so young and almost boyish in his gaiety that it was an unspeakable shock. Those murderous readings which killed him were enthralling. Never shall I forget the effect produced by his reading of the death of Steerforth; it was tragedy itself, and when he closed the book and his voice ceased the audience for a moment seemed paralysed, and one could almost hear a sigh of relief.