We had a rehearsal of the tableaux at Braxome in the evening. Lady Beatrice looked absurd as Britannia; she posed herself after the tail of a penny; Mr. Parker as Uncle Sam, and Mr. Vane-Corduroy as John Bull, shaking hands, were quite good, but Mr. Frame, who was working the red, white, and blue light, set fire to himself, and might have been burned to death, but for his presence of mind. He put himself out by wrapping himself in Lady Beatrice's Gobelin tapestry, which she had specially made in Paris last year. You should have seen Lady Beatrice's face, and she called him "Frame," as she always does when she is angry with him, and she told him he might have waited till they brought some water to throw over him. Mrs. Vane-Corduroy, as Lady Macbeth going to murder Duncan, would have been effective, if she hadn't laughed in the middle of it. Everybody said that Tom and I in "The Black Brunswicker's Farewell" were the best, but Tom squeezed me so, I could hardly breathe, and when the curtain dropped he said we must do it over again for an encore. We think the tableaux will be a great success, for all the tickets on sale at Mr. Dill's, the chemist, have been sold, and he wrote to ask Lady Beatrice if he could have some more printed. Mrs. Parker told Lady Beatrice it was awfully good of her to give her drawing-room over to the "peasantry," as she calls the Taunton people. {_An Excellent Chef_} To-day the Vane-Corduroys had a lunch-party. They have an excellent _chef_. Mr. Vane-Corduroy said he was five years with the Duchess of Rougemont, and only left because the Duchess refused to pay for the tuning of his piano. I think the Vane-Corduroys are afraid of him. Thérèse tells me that he has a room fitted up as a studio at Shotover, and that he exhibits every year at the Salon, and only cooks from the love of it. He has his meals in his own apartments. Mrs. Vane-Corduroy showed me several photographs of Fido, and one of his grave in the Dog Cemetery; he was run over by a 'bus in the Bayswater road; and Mrs. Vane-Corduroy shed tears when she told me of it, and she said she went into mourning for him for three months, and a Royal Academician is at present at work on his portrait from one of the photographs. She intends to have it hung in the Academy next year, and when I suggested that sometimes the best pictures of the best artists were rejected, she said that Mr. Vane-Corduroy had seen about it already, for he had put the Duke of Rougemont on to something good in the City, and the Duke had promised that he would see the picture was hung, and not skied either. {_Two Visitors_}