any
need for it?

"You must positively learn patience. I have been absent a week or
so, and you talk of coming down here and haunting the house! Such
ghosts as you meet with strange treatment when they go about
unprotected, let me give you warning. You have my full permission
to walk out in the Parks for exercise. I think you are bound to do
it, for your health's sake.

"Pray discontinue that talk about the alteration in your looks. You
must learn that you are no longer a child. Cease to write like a
child. If people stare at you, as you say, you are very well aware
it is not because you are becoming plain. You do not mean it, I
know; but there is a disingenuousness in remarks of this sort that
is to me exceedingly distasteful. Avoid the shadow of hypocrisy.
Women are subject to it--and it is quite innocent, no doubt. I
won't lecture you.

"My cousin Algernon is here with me. He has not spoken of your
sister. Your fears in that direction are quite unnecessary. He is
attached to a female cousin of ours, a very handsome person, witty,
and highly sensible, who dresses as well as the lady you talk about
having seen one day in Wrexby Church. Her lady's-maid is a
Frenchwoman, which accounts for it. You have not forgotten the
boulevards?

"I wish you to go on with your lessons in French. Educate yourself,
and you will rise superior to these distressing complaints. I
recommend you to read the newspapers daily. Buy nice picture-books,
if the papers are too matter-of-fact for you. By looking eternally
inward, you teach yourself to fret, and the consequence is, or will
be, that you wither. No constitution can stand it. All the ladies
here take an interest in Parliamentary affairs. They can talk to
men upon men's themes. It is impossible to explain to you how
wearisome an everlasting nursery prattle becomes. The idea that men
ought never to tire of it is founded on some queer belief that they
are not mortal.

"Parliament opens in February. My father wishes me to stand for
Selborough. If he or some one will do the talking to the tradesmen,
and provide the beer and the bribes, I have no objection. In that
case my Law goes to the winds. I'm bound to make a show of
obedience, for he has scarcely got over my summer's trip. He holds
me a prisoner to him for heaven knows how long--it may be months.

"As for the