The difficulty was to know where to start. I couldn't commit myself, I felt, by _one_ dinner, so when my Will came back... From the north, yes. You knew that he was home? Oh, yes! Well, at the moment he is not doing anything. The Morecambe experiment was _not_ a success; the place didn't suit him, and he didn't suit the place. That is all I care to say on the subject. Half-truths are always misleading; and I cannot tell you the full story, because I do not know it. Should it not be enough to know that for days my spirit was _crucified_? And the end is not yet... I have lost the thread... Ah, yes. We dined _à trois_: Will and Mrs. Sawyer and I. She was fascinating, magnetic. For the first time Will forgot all about the odious clergyman's odious daughter... No, it slipped out. That belongs to the unhappy Morecambe episode, and I really do not think it very kind of you to keep trying to pump me when I have said I prefer not to discuss it... When he returned after seeing her home, Will wanted to know all about her, and in such a _way_... I mean, if his voice and manner meant anything, they meant that he had met his fate, as it were. I could tell him little. For one thing, I didn't know; for another, his excitement had gone to my head, I saw ten things at once and, breaking through them all, this splendid, untamed creature with the flashing eyes walking side by side with my Will. Such a contrast ... and _such_ a combination... "Well, hadn't you better find out something about her?," said Will. I promised to do my best, but one was sent from pillar to post in a quite too ridiculous way. I _thought_ some one had told me she came from Buenos Aires (perhaps it was only Major Blanstock's saying he had met her on the boat coming home from there); I tried the Argentine colony and the Legation, only to be referred to the Brazilian Embassy; and there, though I am _sure_ they had never heard of her, they were certain that she came from Peru. Until then, I had never realized how many republics there were in South America; I went from Colombia to the Argentine and from Ecuador to Chili. _Invariably_ the first question was: "_What_ was her name before she _became_ Mrs. Sawyer?" And that, of course, I did not know. There is such a thing as _trop de zèle_, sometimes hardly distinguishable from making oneself ridiculous... "Surely," I said to Will, "our judgement of this person or that is a better criterion than the bald (and perhaps inaccurate) statement that a person was _born_ here and _married_ there. Connie Maitland has asked us to shew some little kindness to our friend; and I am not ashamed to confess that it seems _grudging_ to insist too much on credentials. In a favourite phrase of your own, Will, she is "good enough" for me; and, if any one says: "I met her at Lady Ann's," I should be tempted to answer: "I hope you do not need a better recommendation." "I don't want to look a fool, that's all," said Will.