What a mercy black suits me! My skin is ridiculously white--I shall stick a bunch of violets in my frock, that could not look heartless, I suppose. But if he asks me if I am sad about Mrs. Carruthers’ death, I shall not be able to tell a lie. I am sad, of course, because death is a terrible thing, and to die like that, saying spiteful things to every one, must be horrid--but I can’t, I can’t regret her! Not a day ever passed that she did not sting some part of me--when I was little, it was not only with her tongue, she used to pinch me, and box my ears until Doctor Garrison said it might make me deaf, and then she stopped, because she said deaf people were a bore, and she could not put up with them. I shall not go on looking back! There are numbers of things that even now make me raging to remember. I have only been out for a year. Mrs. Carruthers got an attack of bronchitis when I was eighteen, just as we were going up to town for the season, and said she did not feel well enough for the fatigues, and off we went to Switzerland. And in the autumn we travelled all over the place, and in the winter she coughed and groaned, and the next season would not go up until the last court, so I have only had a month of London. The bronchitis got perfectly well, it was heart-failure that killed her, brought on by an attack of temper because Thomas broke the Carruthers vase. I shall not write of her death, or the finding of the will, or the surprise that I was left nothing but a thousand pounds, and a diamond ring. Now that I am an adventuress, instead of an heiress, of what good to chronicle all that! Sufficient to say if Mr. Carruthers does not obey his orders, and offer me his hand this afternoon, I shall have to pack my trunks, and depart by Saturday--but where to is yet in the lap of the gods! He is coming by the 3.20 train, and will be in the house before four, an ugly, dull time; one can’t offer him tea, and it will be altogether trying and exciting.