Benella confessed that she had not the heart to refuse Francesca anything. “She's too handsome,” she said, “and too winnin'. I s'pose she'll cook up some dreadful messes, but I'm willin' to eat 'em, to oblige her, and perhaps it'll save her husband a few spells of dyspepsy at the start; though, as far as my experience goes, ministers'll always eat anything that's set before 'em, and look over their shoulders for more.” We had a heavenly week of silliness, and by dint of concealing our real relations from the general public, I fancy we escaped harsh criticism. There is a very large percentage of lunacy anyway in Ireland, as well as great leniency of public opinion, and I fancy there is scarcely a country on the map in which one could be more foolish without being found out. Visit each other we did constantly, and candour obliges me to state that, though each of us secretly prided herself on the perfection of her cuisine, Miss Monroe gave the most successful afternoon tea of all, on the 'wee grass,' under the Japanese umbrella. How unexpectedly good were her scones, her tea-cakes, and her cress sandwiches, and how pretty and graceful and womanly she was, all flushed with pride at our envy and approbation! I did a water-colour sketch of her and sent it to Ronald, receiving in return a letter bubbling over with fond admiration and gratitude. She seems always in tone with the season and the landscape, does Francesca, and she arrives at it unconsciously, too. She glances out of her window at the yellow laburnum-tree when she is putting on her white frock, and it suggests to her all her amber trinkets and her drooping hat with the wreath of buttercups. When she came to my hawthorn luncheon at Rosaleen Cottage she did not make the mistake of heaping pink on pink, but wore a cotton gown of palest green, with a bunch of rosy blossoms at her belt. I painted her just as she stood under the hawthorn, with its fluttering petals and singing birds, calling the picture Grainne Mael [*]: A Vision of Erinn, writing under it the verse:-- 'The thrushes seen in bushes green are singing loud-- Bid sadness go and gladness glow,--give welcome proud! The Rover comes, the Lover, whom you long bewail, O'er sunny seas, with honey breeze, to Grainne Mael.' * Pronounced Graunia Wael, the M being modified. It is one of the endearing names given to Ireland in the Penal Times.