“I have been sorry to leave your letter so long unanswered, but I am bothered about a great many things. My wife has been out of health for nearly a year. The doctors fear her chest is affected, and tell me I ought to get her away from England before the winter. As things have been going very badly with me for a long time I shall not be sorry to cut this beastly town, where the men who have made their money, God knows how, are now upon the crest of the wave, and by their reckless expenditure have made it impossible for a man of small means to live in London—if he wants to live like a gentleman. Everything is twice as dear as it used to be when I was a subaltern. My wife and I are pigging in two rooms on a second floor in Jermyn Street. I live at my club, and she lives on her relatives, so that we don’t often have to sit down to a lodging-house dinner of burnt soles and greasy chops, but the whole business is wretched. She has to go to parties in a four-wheel cab, and I can hardly afford the risk of a rubber. So I shall be uncommonly glad to cut it all, and settle in some out-of-the-way place where we can live cheap, and where the climate will suit Millicent. “My first idea was Algiers, but things are still rather unsettled there, as you know. Lambton, of the Guards, has been shooting in Corsica lately, and came home with a glowing account of the climate and the cheapness of the inns, which are roughish, but clean and fairly comfortable; so I have determined on Corsica. We shall be within a day’s sail of Nice, so not utterly out of reach of civilization, and we can live there how we like, without entertaining a mortal, or having to buy new clothes. Millicent, who is fond of novelty, is in love with the notion, and Dangerfield has behaved very well to her, promising her an extra hundred a year if we will live quietly and keep out of debt, which, considering he is as poor as Job, is not so bad. As for my creditors, they are pretty quiet since I got Aunt Belle’s legacy, part of which I divided among ’em as a sop to Cerberus. They’ll have to be still quieter when I’m settled in Corsica.