om was rather dark--none of these London rooms seem to me
to have any light and air in them. The butler got our names wrong and I
marched in first, more shy than I ever have been before in my life. Lady
Charlotte had two gentlemen with her. She evidently did not know me in
the least; she stood staring at me with her eyeglass on, and her cap
so crooked I could think of nothing but a wish to put it straight. Then
Rose followed, and in a few minutes it seemed to me as though it were
Rose who were hostess, talking to the two gentlemen and being kind
to Lady Charlotte. I am sure everybody in the room was amused by her
self-possession, Lady Charlotte included. The gentlemen stared at her
a great deal, and Lady Charlotte paid her one or two compliments on her
looks, which _I_ thought she would not have ventured to say to anyone in
her own circle.'

'We stayed about half an hour. One of the gentlemen was, I believe, a
member of the Government, an under-secretary for something, but he
and Rose and Lady Charlotte talked again of nothing but musicians and
actors. It is strange that politicians should have time to know so much
of these things. The other gentleman reminded me of Hotspur's popinjay.
I think now I made out that he wrote for the newspapers, but at the
moment I should have felt it insulting to accuse him of anything so
humdrum as an occupation in life. He discovered somehow that I had an
interest in the Church, and he asked me, leaning back in his chair and
lisping, whether I really thought "the Church could still totter on
a while in the rural districts." He was informed her condition was so
"vewy dethperate."

'Then I laughed outright, and found my tongue. Perhaps his next article
on the Church will have a few facts in it. I did my best to put some
into him. Rose at last looked round at me, astonished. But he did not
dislike me, I think. I was not impertinent to him, husband mine. If I
might have described just _one_ of your days to his high-and-mightiness!
There is no need to tell you, I think, whether I did or not.'

'Then when we got up to go, Lady Charlotte asked Rose to stay with
her. Rose explained why she couldn't, and Lady Charlotte pitied her
dreadfully for having a family, and the under-secretary said that it
was one's first duty in life to trample on one's relations, and that he
hoped nothing would prevent his hearing her play sometime later in the
year. Rose said very decidedly she should be in town for