There is a Mr. Nugent, a guest, at the Club House, of Mr. Rogers, who rather interests me the most. I think on the whole I must tell you a little experience. He is about forty and a “brilliantly successful” lawyer. He has argued famous cases before the Supreme Court, amassed a fortune, and his admirers--not this set--want him to go into politics. He is very striking in appearance, tall, thin, nervous, with a lean, clever, hard, mobile face, an eye that burns and penetrates, a mouth that looks as if it had conquered everything but his passions, and a quick nervous grip of the hand which suggests that what he does he does quickly and wastes no time arguing about. Next to Mr. Rogers Bertie likes him better than any one up here, and I must confess he rather fascinates me. I am wicked enough to want to see a man like that go off his head about me. But I fancy I’d have my hands full if he ever did let go. Mr. Rogers--he is getting rather devoted, my dear--I always could manage, because he would be so afraid of making himself ridiculous that he hardly would allow his voice to tremble unless I almost proposed to him. He burst out one day: “You white English rose!” I fear I used my eyelashes rather wickedly, and my upper lip, for he drew a step nearer and the colour came into his grey face. Then I felt my eyes twinkle and he recovered himself in a manner that would have done credit to a woman of the world in her fourteenth flirtation; men are usually so clumsy about these things; he smiled quickly and added in the light tone of any man complimenting any woman: “You are really unique here, you know, Lady Helen. Perhaps lily is rather your prototype in the floral world than rose. You make my countrywomen seem like hot-house flowers--if there were a floral heaven they would all be beautiful orchids in the next world.” But to return to Mr. Nugent. One warm evening when he was calling on us and we were sitting on the piazza I asked him if he intended to go into politics. It is very difficult to make him talk of anything consecutively, by the way, and that makes him resemble us in one particular, at least. There are no semi-colons in _his_ conversation, mostly dashes. “I have not made up my mind, Lady Helen. It is an alluring prospect in one way, but I should be obliged to give up--those are wonderful clouds.” They were, Polly. Above the mountain behind the Club House were two enormous masses of cloud that looked like colossal blue dishes piled to the heavens with whipped cream. They were almost alike and you cannot imagine anything more perfect than that cream whipped into form by a giant hand. I thought out loud and Mr. Nugent said hastily: “Oh, call it sea foam, not cream.” “But sea foam looks like yeast,” I objected. “I don’t think you are a bit more poetical than I am.”