'On Friday the 18th I dined at Lady Waldegrave's to meet the old Strawberry Hill set--the Duke of Argyll, the Duchess of Manchester, Lord and Lady Granville, Harcourt, James, Ayrton, Lord William Hay, and Mr. and Mrs. Tom Hughes--and some people came in after dinner, of whom Sir J. Rose and his daughter (Mrs. Stanley Clarke) warmly congratulated me on my speech. There was a discussion between the Liberals and the Duchess of Manchester, who was in both camps, and Sir John Rose, who as a financier was the same, as to the reasons for Lord Carnarvon's absence from Lord Beaconsfield's Queen's Speech Dinner, but we could not get farther than to learn that "Dizzy had made it unpleasant for him. ..." [Footnote: 'Another matter as to which I was personally interested, though the others seemed hardly to have heard of it, was a communication which had been made to France about Egypt with regard to joint inquiry into the state of finances, a communication all but volunteered by us, and not, I thought, in the least necessary, but which was so strong in terms as to appear to shut the door in the future against any possibility of action on our part other than joint action with the French.'] 'On Saturday the 19th Mr. Gladstone sent Lefevre to me, and asked me not to raise the case of Greece at present, as he thought that a combined movement with regard to Greece might soon be made in the House of Commons with some chance of success. 'On the Sunday Drummond Wolff dined with me, very full of the intrigues to get rid of Lord Derby and Lord Carnarvon from the Conservative Front Bench, and very hopeful of success, for at this moment the Conservatives were so angry with their two peaceful men that they made no secret of their intention to force them out, and used freely to discuss the situation with the Liberals. 'On January 22nd I started an attempt to get up a Greek Committee, an attempt which was successful, for our little meeting of this day, of Fitzmaurice and Lefevre and myself, with the adhesion by letter of Lansdowne and of Rosebery, led to the private formation of a Committee, afterwards made public, and much enlarged, of which I made Lewis Sergeant secretary, and which was able to do much good in the course of the three next years. ...That night I dined with Mrs. Inwood Jones (Lady Morgan's niece), and met Mr. and Mrs. Stansfeld, Browning, Charles Villiers, Lady Hamilton Gordon, and another man whom I will not name, because I wish to mention that I received from him on that occasion a document relating to Greek affairs, from which I was afterwards able to show how badly our Government had treated Greece, but the origin of which I ought not to reveal.