By no one was I made more welcome than by Mrs. Sartoris (Adelaide Kemble). She was a very old friend of ours, and I had known her from my boyhood. Her house was a gathering-place for all that was most distinguished in Letters and Art. Her dinners were perfection—never more than eight or ten—for her dining-room was small, and she knew better than to crowd her guests. She was now no longer young, but so witty, so full of pleasant memories, and one of the best leaders of talk that I ever knew. Of an evening she would be surrounded by such men as Charles Dickens, Matthew Arnold, Leighton, while Sir Charles Hallé would sit down at her piano and accompany Joachim or Madame Norman Neruda, the great artists playing just for the love of music and of her. The society was very catholic, for she was equally beloved of the stately dames who were the law-givers of the great world. She herself would sometimes sing some song of Gounod or Alary; her voice had grown rather thin, but the way in which she told the story of her song was exquisite. I used to go most afternoons to tea in Park Place, just for the pleasure of hearing her talk. She had little patience with the affectations of the modern æsthetes then just coming into vogue. I remember once at the Monday Popular Concerts one of those young men coming up to her and saying: “Oh! Mrs. Sartoris, did you notice that divine diminished seventh?” “My dear boy,” was the answer, “don’t talk nonsense—a diminished seventh is mere grammar. You might as well rave about the divinity of an ablative absolute in a poem.” She told us one day that as she had been hunting, as was her wont in the old shops in Wardour Street, a man, obviously a foreigner, followed her rather offensively. At last she turned round upon him and lifting her veil, said: “Il paraît que monsieur est amateur d’antiquités.” The man fled before the grand severe face. She had the beautiful features and the solemn expression of the Kemble family, reminding one of the great portrait of her aunt, Mrs. Siddons. When she was in a serious mood it was the countenance of a sibyl. It was a loss indeed when she, smitten by the unbearable grief of her son’s tragic death, thrown by his horse larking over a hurdle, sought refuge in solitude and silence. People even now delight in her “Week in a French Country House”—a description of life in the château of the Marquis de L’Aigle, who married Mrs. Sartoris’ sister-in-law. It was a dainty book illustrated by Leighton, but for myself I even preferred her “Past Hours.” Those who never knew her may there see the reflection of her brilliant talk; but nothing can give the effect of her words as she uttered them, her eager face lighted up by the fire of her fine imagination.