interested in it. Pray decide to do it. Send the papers, as you write
them, to me. Meanwhile I will think of a name for them, and bring it to
bear upon yours, if I think yours improvable. I am sure you may rely on
being widely understood and sympathised with.

Forget that I called those two women my dear friends! Why, if I told you
a fiftieth part of what I have thought about them, you would write me
the most suspicious of notes, refusing to receive the fiftieth part of
that. So I don't write, particularly as you laid your injunctions on me
concerning Ruth. In revenge, I will now mention one word that I wish you
would take out whenever you reprint that book. She would never--I am
ready to make affidavit before any authority in the land--have called
her seducer "Sir," when they were living at that hotel in Wales. A girl
pretending to be what she really was would have done it, but she--never!

Ever most faithfully yours.

[Sidenote: Monsieur Regnier.]

TAVISTOCK HOUSE, _Monday, May 9th, 1853._

MY DEAR REGNIER,

I meant to have spoken to you last night about a matter in which I hope
you can assist me, but I forgot it. I think I must have been quite
_bouleverse_ by your supposing (as you pretended to do, when you went
away) that it was not a great pleasure and delight to me to see you act!

There is a certain Miss Kelly, now sixty-two years old, who was once one
of the very best of English actresses, in the greater and better days of
the English theatre. She has much need of a benefit, and I am exerting
myself to arrange one for her, on about the 9th of June, if possible, at
the St. James's Theatre. The first piece will be an entertainment of her
own, and she will act in the last. Between these two (and at the best
time of the night), it would be a great attraction to the public, and a
great proof of friendship to me, if you would act. If we could manage,
through your influence and with your assistance, to present a little
French vaudeville, such as "_Le bon Homme jadis_," it would make the
night a grand success.

Mitchell's permission, I suppose, would be required. That I will
undertake to apply for, if you will tell me that you are willing to help
us, and that you could answer for the other necessary actors in the
little French piece, whatever the piece might be, that you would choose
for the purpose. Pray write me a short note in answer, on