Just like you, and quite tactful not to cool our affection for each other by sending me a wet blanket in the shape of a congratulation. I like Sir Guy more and more, he understands me so well, he knows my faults, which is a great relief, for I have no silent obliquity to smother, or no good behaviour to act up to more than is comfortable. He is doing a set of sketches of the Highlands for you, which I am sure you will like. However, tho’ he is of a Highland family, let me take from your mind any impression that he is at all Scotch in obstinacy, cunning cheek-bones, or twang. He has not been in Scotland for the last six and twenty years. You need not tell dear Mrs. Colvile this, who has built all my hopes of future happiness on his being Scotch to the bone. Hers was the first letter I received with Lady Campbell on it.... I cannot say how pretty it was of you to send that pretty cap, which I think the prettiest cap that ever was prettied. Pat your Grantham for she did that commission well. So she was very brimful of London and the ways and means of the place? You wonder at her liking it so much after having had so much of it; but it grows upon them like a description I read somewhere of some part of the Infernal Regions, where the damned were condemned to misery and dirt, wallowing in mire and sand, but they were so degraded they had lost the sense of misery, and had no wish to leave the darkness for light. I wear your dear cap often and often, and occasionally Sir Guy wears it when he is not very well. He says he is sure you will be gratified by the attention. I have had a very neat silk pelisse trimmed with fur, sent without the donor’s name, and as the poor thing is a very pretty pelisse, but can’t tell me its business or where it comes from, I have a silent great-coat here, and thanks I can’t impart. I believe it comes from those Lady Hills, those bosom friends I never could bear, and if I have thanked the Gods amiss, I can’t help it. Have you seen your Elliots?[142] for I am anxious to know what India has done for them. It is a dangerous experiment, they get so stuffed with otto of roses, sandal-wood and sentiment, they never come quite right.... Aunty is in the grumps with the rheumatism, and the winds and draughts. You know the sort of silent-victim appearance of suffering innocence some people take and wear, which increases when the meat is tough, and the pudding burnt, and which is all more or less aimed at me, till I feel so _culprit_, as if I blew the winds, and made the cold, and toughed the meat, and burnt the dish. However, I don’t mind it now and go on doing my best for all of them, particularly as she desired not to be troubled with housekeeping, and as I recollect she always keeps a growl at the cold at home. Sir Guy behaves like an angel to her....