of the world,
as I travel, and Rome seems to be changed in many ways. They say
the ruin was dreadful when the crash came. I suppose you gave up
business then, as was natural, since they say there is no more
business to do. But I would be glad to know that nothing
disagreeable happened to you in the financial storm. I confess to
having felt an unaccountable anxiety about you of late. Perhaps
that is why I write and why I hope for an answer at once. I have
always looked upon presentiments and forewarnings and all such
intimations as utterly false and absurd, and I do not really
believe that anything has happened or is happening to distress you.
But it is our woman's privilege to be inconsistent, and we should
be still more inconsistent if we did not use it. Besides I have
felt the same vague disquietude about you more than once before and
have not written. Perhaps I should not write even now unless I had
a great deal more time at my disposal than I know what to do with.
Who knows? If you are busy, write a word on a post-card, just to
say that nothing is the matter. Here in Egypt we do not realise
what time means, and certainly not that it can ever mean money.

"It is an idle life, less idle for me perhaps than for some of
those about me, but even for me not over-full of occupations. The
climate occupies all the time not actually spent in eating,
sleeping and visiting ruins. It is fair, I suppose, to tell you
something of myself since I ask for news of you. I will tell you
what I can.

"I am travelling with an old lady, as her companion--not exactly
out of inclination and yet not exactly out of duty. Is that too
mysterious? Do you see me as Companion and general amuser to an old
lady--over seventy years of age? No. I presume not. And I am not
with her by necessity either, for I have not suffered any losses.
On the contrary, since I dismissed a certain person--an attendant,
we will call her--from my service, it seems to me that my income is
doubled. The attendant, by the bye, has opened a hotel on the Lake
of Como. Perhaps you, who are so good a man of business, may see
some connexion between these simple facts. I was never good at
managing money, nor at understanding what it meant. It seems that I
have not inherited all the family talents.