few women down to
breakfast besides our hostess, who is so bright and cheery in the
morning; and when you think how morose English people are until lunch
time it is a great quality. Some of the men came down ready to start,
and these were the ones in the worst humour. After breakfast half of
them disappeared to the stables, and the rest played "Bridge," except
Lord Valmond and Mr. Hodgkinson, who wanted to stay with us, only we
would not have them, so we were left to ourselves more or less.

[Sidenote: _An Amusing Mistake_]

Mrs. Murray-Hartley took us to see the pictures and the collections of
china and miniatures; and she talks about them all just like a book,
and calls them simple little things, and you would never have guessed
they cost thousands, and that she had not been used to them always,
until she showed us a beautiful enamel of Madame de Pompadour, and
called it the Princesse de Lamballe, and said so sympathetically that
it was quite too melancholy to think she had been hacked to pieces in
the Revolution; only perhaps it served her right for saying "_Apres moi
le deluge!_". Octavia was in fits, and I wonder no one noticed it. Then
she said she must leave us for a little in the music-room, as she
always went to see her children at this hour--they live in another
wing.

[Sidenote: _Gossip_]

By that time Lady Doraine and Lady Greswold, and most of the others
were down, and some of them looked as if they had been up awfully late.
It seems they did not finish the baccarat until half-past three, and
that Lord Oldfield won more than a thousand pounds. Mrs. Murray-Hartley
had hardly got out of the door, when Lady Doraine said what a beautiful
woman she was, and Lady Greswold began "yes and such tact," and Lady
Bobby said, "and so charming," and Lady Cecilia--who was doing ribbon
work on a small frame that sounds like a drum every time you put the
needle through--looked up and drawled in her voice right up at the top,
"Yes, I have noticed very rich people always are."

Then they all talked at once, and by listening carefully one made out
that they were saying a nice thing about every one, only with a
different ending to it, like: "she is perfectly devey but what a pity
she makes herself so remarkable," and "Darling Florrie, of course she
is as straight as a die, but wearing those gowns so much too young for
her, and with that very French figure, it does give people a wrong
impression," and "It is extraordinary