etters she urges him
not to forget to write to Francois the baker, at Monterey, saying: "It
seems to me much more necessary to write some word to him than to Sir
Walter, or Baxter, or Henley, for they are your friends who know you
and will not be disappointed, either in a pleasure or in humanity, as
this poor baker will be. Indeed you must write and say something to
him."

As has been said, her dislike of deceit and treachery was one of the
most strongly marked traits in her character. Once when she had reason
to fear that a person whom she was befriending was deceiving her, and
she was told that a simple inquiry would settle the matter, she
replied: "But I couldn't bear to find out that he is lying to me."

Her charities were many, but they were always of the quiet,
unobtrusive sort, of which few heard except those most nearly
concerned. For instance, when she heard of a poor woman in her
neighbourhood whose life could only be saved by an expensive
operation, she paid to have it done. Her life was full of such acts,
and there are many, many people who have good reason to be grateful to
her memory.

But when all is said, it has always seemed to me that the bright star
of her character, shining above all other traits, was her
loyalty--that staunch fidelity that made her cling, through thick and
thin, through good or evil report, to those whom she loved. But as she
loved, so she hated, and as she endowed her friends with all the
virtues, so she could see no good at all in an enemy. Yet, just when
you thought you were beginning to understand her nature--with its love
and hate of the primal woman--her anger would suddenly soften, not
into tenderness, but into a sort of dispassionate wisdom, and she
would quote her favourite saying: "To know all is to forgive all."

That she had infinite tenderness for the feelings of others, living or
dead, she proved every day. In a letter to Mr. Scribner asking advice
about the publication in London of certain letters of her husband, she
says:

"Some of the letters that are intended to go into the book should not,
in my judgment, appear at all. When my husband was a boy in his late
'teens' and early twenties he and his father--a rigid old
Calvinist--quarrelled on the subject of religion. Louis being young
enough to like the melodrama, it took on an undue importance, out of
all keeping with the real facts. During this turbulent period Louis
poured out his soul in letters, the public