And three ladies make up, I believe, the tale of the household: a rather young widow, charming in an unearthly, seeress-like fashion--finest porcelain to her finger-tips, but frail as a breath; a handsome, solid blonde girl, with cold blue eyes, and no gold in her fair hair, studying to be what she calls "a healer"--an earnest advocate of the food-regenerating editor's views upon diet, but quite out-Heroding Herod in her practice, for her fare seems only to lag a pace behind Nebuchadnezzar's in simplicity; and last a witty _Americaine_, an art student at the South Kensington school, with whom I fraternized directly, and from whom I had all the information my own eyes didn't glean. A girl twenty-four or five years old, I fancy, and oh, so satisfyingly handsome--not tall, but majestic in proportions and pose: a beautifully shaped head whose outlines were only revealed by closely-pinned braids of fine dark hair, and a face like a lily for calm and purity--too pale, indeed, for brilliant health, but the faint shadows under the eyes, about the temples and mouth that she owes to months in dimly-lighted rooms are really most effective aids to her peculiar beauty. She captivated me quite; Ronayne, too, who is a great conquest, for usually he dislikes Americans, finding them, he says, so shallow and yet so cockahoop. And the other guests at dinner were a lady lecturer, American, too, young, decidedly pretty, but pert as a pigeon, an Englishwoman who's doing something very notable in reformatories and kindergartens, a Liberal M.P. dancing attendance on the young lady lecturer, and a grand old white-headed lion of a man, a famous literary M.D.--heterodox to a frightful degree, I'm told, but certainly one of the most delightful neighbors I ever had at a dinner table. And a very enjoyable dinner-party it was, altogether: a simple but carefully arranged menu, the dishes thoroughly well cooked--two or three foreign touches, _maccaroni aux tomates_, American-trimmed peaches with cream, and little fairy cakes--cat tongues--do you know them?--and roasted almonds in Spanish fashion, and as good claret Sauterne and sparkling Mosel (for I know a good glass of wine when I get it) as one need wish for. The food-regenerator and his wife and the blonde "healer" had seats together, and were helped only to vegetables and fruits--the girl, indeed, taking only unbolted bread, of which an enormous supply in the shape of hard little cakes was placed before her, together with a large vegetable-dish full of stewed prunes; and the two mountains of bread and fruit had disappeared when the meal was ended--how many pounds I don't know, but then dinner is her sole meal in the twenty-four hours.