The whole Parker family are at Claridge's, and the Pullman is to take the Taunton guests up to town to-morrow. I shall stop at the Carlton, and remain in London for a few nights, and it is so much gayer there than at the Buckingham Palace _dépendances_. It is an awful time of the year for a wedding, but I suppose Miss Parker thinks that if she postpones it, Clandevil may find another bride still richer than herself. Lady Beatrice is not going; she says nothing but family business would take her to town in November. I think the Parkers feel hurt about it, because Lady Beatrice would give a sort of backbone to the marriage feast that nobody else would. {_Hospital Nurses_} Mrs. Blaine has been pronounced out of danger, but the girls have had to give up the "Second Mrs. Tanqueray." The hospital nurse from Bath has been so much trouble that they have had to send her back, and Daisy is nursing her mother. It seems the nurse was very pretty, and Berty, who has never been known to speak to a girl, was found in the dining-room with her at midnight with champagne and biscuits. Blanche said, not between them, for they were sitting so close together there wasn't any room, but in front of them. And poor Mrs. Blaine at 105°, and no nourishment had passed her lips for hours. Blanche will go up to the wedding with me. Talking of hospital nurses, it seems the Vane-Corduroys had trouble with theirs too. She wasn't pretty and flirtatious, but middle-aged and "bossy," really to my mind more objectionable than the Blaines'. She had not been at Shotover an hour before she took the measure of the household; the doctor said Mr. Vane-Corduroy must be kept quiet, and the nurse refused to allow even his wife to see him. He was kept as isolated as if he had had the plague, and to amuse him nurse read "Paradise Lost" aloud to him. She terrorised Mrs. Vane-Corduroy, who fairly quaked in her presence; she kept the servants constantly doing things for her, had her meals served her whenever she fancied them, had the grooms riding into Taunton at all hours of the day and night, and made her power felt thoroughly, besides being paid I don't know how many guineas a day, and if everything was not done just as she wished it and at once, she threatened that Mr. Vane-Corduroy would die as a consequence. Her credentials were so good that even the doctor was afraid of her, but on the second day she fell foul of the _chef_. His suite of rooms was next to hers, and he was composing a _menu_ at the piano, which, as it was after midnight, disturbed nurse a good deal. She complained to Mrs. Vane-Corduroy the next day, and poor Mrs. Vane-Corduroy, who is terribly afraid of her _chef_, was driven nearly distracted; nurse even sought out the _chef_ himself and ordered him to obey her, and his reply was a gesture more rude than effective, and even went so far as to threaten her if she interfered with his province. That night for dinner there was