August_.

[Sidenote: _Lady Bobby's Diversions_]

Dearest Mamma,--I shall be home with you almost as soon as you get
this. But I must tell you about these last two days. The man I went in
to dinner with the first night was so nice-looking, only he did not
seem as if he could collect his thoughts enough to finish his
sentences, and it left them sounding so silly sometimes, but I found
out before we had begun the entrees that it was because Mrs. Westaway
was sitting opposite, and he was gazing at her. She looked lovely, but
not like any one I have seen yet since I stayed out. She had a diamond
collar and two ropes of pearls (Jane Roose said they were imitation),
and her arms quite bare and very white, but her skin must come off,
because I could see a patch of white on a footman's coat where she
accidentally touched when helping herself to potatoes. She had a huge
tulle bow in her hair, and her earrings were as big as shillings. Lady
Bobby Pomeroy said afterwards in the drawing-room to Jane Roose that
she should not take any more of her meals downstairs with this
"creature;" and she would not have come only that Bobby insisted, as he
was showing some horses, and it is convenient. And so, do you know,
Mamma, Lady Bobby has never come out of her room since, except just to
go to the Horse Show, which she drove to with Mrs. Mannering in a hired
fly. I don't call it very polite to the hostess, do you? This afternoon
she amused herself from her bedroom window by shooting at rabbits just
beyond the wire fence of the lawn with a rook rifle; she did not hit
any rabbits, but she got a gardener in the leg, and the man was very
angry, and bled a great deal, and had to be taken away, and I think it
was very careless of her, don't you?

[Sidenote: _Two is Company_]

Lord Valmond was on his way to the window seat where Jane Roose and I
were sitting the first night after dinner, but Mrs. Westaway caught
hold of her husband's coat-tails as he passed and said quite loud,
"Duckie, you must bring Lord Valmond and introduce him to me, we
haven't met yet, and I want to know all your friends." So Billy
Westaway, who is as obedient as a spaniel, secured Lord Valmond, and
presently we saw them comfortably tucked into a small settee together,
and there they stayed all the evening. She kept licking her lips as if
he was something good to eat, and the next morning she fixed a rose in
his buttonhole at breakfast and called him "Cousin Val," and by