ed
soil. I think I shall get on with her pretty well after all, especially
motoring, when I can take her with plenty of ozone. She is a little
afraid of her brother, though he's five years younger than she (I've now
learned), but extremely proud of him; and it was quite pathetic, her
cutting out the stuff about him in the papers, this morning, and showing
every bit to me, before pasting all in a book she has been keeping for
years, entirely concerned with Sir Lionel. She says she will show that
to me, too, some day, but I mustn't tell him. As if I would!

But about the newspapers. She didn't order any Radical ones, because she
said they were always down on the aristocracy, and unjust as well as
stupid; but she got one by mistake, and you've no idea how delighted the
poor little woman was when it praised her brother up to the skies. Then
she said there were _some_ decent Radicals, after all.

Of course, one knows the difference between "Mirabeau judged by his
friends and Mirabeau judged by the people," and can make allowances (if
one's digestion's good) for points of view. But there's one thing
certain, whether he's angel or devil, or something hybrid between the
two, Sir Lionel Pendragon is a man of importance in the Public Eye. I
wonder if Ellaline realizes his importance in that way? I can't think
she does, or she would have mentioned it, as it needn't have interfered
with her opinion of his private character.

It's a little through Emily, but mostly from the newspaper cuttings,
that I've got my knowledge of what he's done, and been, and is expected
to be.

He's forty. I know that, because the _Morning Post_ gave the date of his
birth, and he's rather a swell, although only a baronet, and not even
that till a short time ago. It appears that the family on both sides
goes back into the mists of antiquity, in the days when legend, handed
down by word of mouth (_can_ you hand things out of your mouth? Sounds
rude), was the forerunner of history. His father's ancestors are
supposed to be descended from King Arthur; hence the "Pendragon";
though, I suppose, if it's true, King Arthur must really have been
married several times, as say the vulgar records of which Tennyson very
properly takes no notice. There have been dukes and earls in the family,
but they have somehow disappeared, perhaps because in those benighted
days there were no American heiresses to keep them up.

It seems that Sir Lionel was a soldier to begin w