t notes that you wondered why our mother ever
married. I am not sufficiently _au courant_ with pre-historic times to
be able to tell you why, but I can see what she has done since she did
marry. She has always effaced herself in the very wisest and most
prudent manner. She has never begrudged papa his Norway fishing or his
August yachting, though she knew he could ill afford them. She has never
bored him _with_ herself, or _about_ us. She has constantly urged him to
go away and enjoy himself, and when he is down with her in the country
she always takes care that all the women he admires and all the men who
best amuse him shall be invited in relays, to prevent his being dull or
feeling teased for a moment. I am quite sure she has never cared the
least about her own wishes, but has only studied his. This is what I
call being a clever woman and a good woman. But I fear such women are as
rare as blue roses. Try and be like her, my dear. She was quite as young
as you are now when she married. But, unfortunately, in truth, you are a
terrible little egotist. You want to shut up this poor young man all
alone with you in a kind of attitude of perpetual adoration--of
yourself. That is what women call affection: you are not alone in your
ideas. Some men submit to this sort of demand, and go about forever held
tight in a leash, like unslipped pointers. The majority--well, the
majority bolt. And I am sure I should if I were one of them. I do not
think you could complain if your beautiful Romeo did. I can see you so
exactly, with your pretty little grave face, and your eyes that have
such a fatal aptitude for tears, and your solemn little views about
matrimony and its responsibilities, making yourself quite odious to this
mirthful Apollo of yours, and innocently believing all the while that
you are pleasing Heaven and saving your own dignity by being so
remarkably unpleasant! Are you _very_ angry with me? I am afraid so.
Myself, I would much sooner have an unfaithful man than a dull one: the
one may be bored _by_ you, but the other bores _you_, which is
immeasurably worse.

* * * * *

_From the Princess di San Zenone, Coombe-Bysset, to the Lady Gwendolen
Chichester, St. Petersburg._

DEAR GWEN,--

How can you _possibly_ tell what mamma did when she was young? I dare
say she fretted dreadfully. Now, of course, she has got used to
it,--like all other miserable women. If people marry only to long to be