cut to pieces by our three-o'clock dinner (on
account of Adelaide), I do not run into arrears with my visits, and
generally, after discharging one or two recent debts of that sort, am
able to get an hour's walk in Kensington Gardens, and come home between
four and five o'clock.

We have not been out a great deal lately; we have taken, I am happy to
say, to discriminating a little among our invitations, and no longer
accept everything that offers.

I spent three delightful days at Oatlands, which is charming to me from
its own beauty and the association of the pleasure which I enjoyed there
in past years. The hawthorn was just coming into blossom, the wild
heaths and moors and commons were one sheet of deep golden gorse and
pale golden broom, and nothing could be lovelier than the whole aspect
of the country.

The day before yesterday I dined _tete-a-tete_ with Mademoiselle d'Este,
for whom I have taken rather a fancy, and who appears to have done the
same by me. Her position is a peculiar and trying one, combined with her
character, which has some striking and interesting elements. She is no
longer young, but has still much personal beauty, and that of an order
not common in England: very dark eyes, hair, and complexion, with a
freedom and liveliness of manner and play of countenance quite unusual
in Englishwomen.... She lives a great deal alone, and reads a great
deal, and thinks a little, and I feel interested in her. She has
sacrificed the whole comfort and, it appears to me, much of the possible
happiness of her life to her notion of being a princess, which, poor
thing! she is not; and as she will not be satisfied with, or even
accept, the position of a private gentlewoman, she is perpetually
obliged to devise means of avoiding situations, which are perpetually
recurring, in which her real rank, or rather _no_ rank, is painfully
brought home to her. This unfortunate pretension to princess-ship has
probably interfered vitally with her happiness, in preventing her
marrying, as she considers, below her birth [_i.e._ royally]; and as she
is a very attractive woman, and, I should judge, a person of strong
feelings and a warm, passionate nature, this must have been a
considerable sacrifice; though in marrying, to be sure, she might only
have realized another form of disappointment.

Yesterday we went to a fine dinner at Lord F----'s. He and his sisters
are good-natured young people of large fortune, whose acquaintanc