’My heart positively bleeds for you.  What is the matter with your hand, that you talk of being a life-long prisoner to your room?  Pray send for Paget or Erichsen, and have yourself put right at once.  No doubt that local simpleton is making a mess of your case.  Perhaps while he is dabbing with lint and lotions the real remedy is the knife.  I am sure amputation would be less melancholy than the despondent state of feeling which you are now suffering.  If any limb of mine went wrong, I should say to the surgeon, “Cut it off, and patch up the stump in your best style; I give you a fortnight, and at the end of that time I expect to be going to parties again.”  Life is not long enough for dawdling surgery.

’As regards Lesbia, I can only say that I adore her, and I am enchanted at the idea that I am to run her myself.  I intend her to be the beauty of the season—­not one of the loveliest debutantes, or any rot of that kind—­but just the girl whom everybody will be crazy about.  There shall be a mob wherever she appears, Di, I promise you that.  There is no one in London who can work a thing of that kind better than your humble servant.  And when once the girl is the talk of the town, all the rest is easy.  She can choose for herself among the very best men in society.  Offers will pour in as thickly as circulars from undertakers and mourning warehouses after a death.

’Lesbia is so cool-headed and sensible that I have not the least doubt of her success.  With an impulsive or romantic girl there is always the fear of a fiasco.  But this sweet child of yours has been well brought up, and knows her own value.  She behaved like a queen here, where I need not tell you society is just a little mixed; though, of course, we only cultivate our own set.  Your heart would swell with pride if you could see the way she puts down men who are not quite good style; and the ease with which she crushes those odious American girls, with their fine complexions and loud manners.

    ’Be assured that I shall guard her as the apple of my eye, and that
    the detrimental who circumvents me will be a very Satan of schemers.

    ’I can but smile at your mention of Carson, whose gowns used to fit
    us so well in our girlish days, and whose bills seem moderate
    compared with the exorbitant accounts I get now.

’Carson has long been forgotten, my dear soul, gone with the snows of last year.  A long procession of fashionable French dressmakers has passed across the stage since her time, like the phantom kings in Macbeth; and now the last rage is to have our gowns made by an Englishman who works for the Princess, and who gives himself most insufferable airs, or an Irishwoman who is employed by all the best actresses.  It is to the latter, Kate Kearney, I shall entrust our sweet Lesbia’s toilettes.’

The same post brought a loving letter from Lesbia, full of regret at not being allowed to go down to Fellside, and yet full of delight at the prospect of her first season.