se cheeks, with their
meaningless red and their causeless white, have so fully done.

The season is over now; every one has trooped away from the sun-baked
squares, and the sultry streets of the great empty town. I have never
_done_ a season before, and the heat and the late hours have tired me
wofully. Often, when I have gone to a ball, I have longed to go to bed
instead. And, now that we are home again, it would seem to me very
pleasant to sit in leisurely coolness by the pool, and to watch the
birth, and the prosperous short lives, of the late roses, and the great
bright gladioli in the garden-borders. Yes, it would have seemed very
pleasant to me--if--(why is life so full of _ifs_? "Ifs" and "Buts,"
"Ifs" and "Buts," it seems made up of them! Little ugly words! in heaven
there will be none of you!)--if--to back and support the outward good
luck, there had been any inward content. But there is none! The trouble
that I took with me to London, I have brought back thence whole and
undiminished.

It is September now; so far has the year advanced! We are well into the
partridges. Their St. Bartholomew has begun. Roger is away among the
thick green turnip-ridges and the short white stubble all the day. I
wish to Heaven that I could shoot, too, and hunt. It would not matter if
I never killed any thing--indeed, I think--of the two--I had rather not;
I had rather have a course of empty bags and blank days than snuff out
any poor, little, happy lives; but the occupation that these amusements
would entail would displace and hinder the minute mental torments I now
daily, in my listless, luxurious idleness, endure. I am thinking these
thoughts one morning, as I turn over my unopened letters, and try, with
the misplaced ingenuity and labor one is so apt to employ in such a
case, to make out from the general air of their exteriors--from their
superscriptions--from their post-marks, whom they are from. About one
there is no doubt. It is from Barbara. I have not heard from Barbara for
a fortnight or three weeks. It will be the usual thing, I suppose.
Father has got the gout in his right toe, or his left calf, or his
wrist, or all his fingers, and is, consequently, fuller than usual of
hatred and malice; mother's neuralgia is very bad, and she is sadly in
want of change, but she cannot leave him. Algy has lost a lot of money
at Goodwood, and they are afraid to tell father, etc., etc. Certainly,
life is rather up-hill! I slowly tear t