I saw the Baronne talking to him seriously while we were having “five o’clock;” and just as we were starting, she came up and said low to Heloise, who was beside me, “J’espere que tout va bien, Adele l’a remplace, et ne veut plus de lui!  Oh! la bonne fille!” So whoever “Adele” is, I suppose she has done Victorine a good turn.  I asked Heloise on our way home if “Adele” was a relation of the Marquis’s, and she went into fits of laughter and said, “Oui, une tres proche,” but I can’t see anything to laugh at, can you, Mamma?

[Sidenote:  A Country Dinner Party]

In the evening there was a ghastly dinner party at Croixmare.  Three sets of provincial families.  They are really awful these entertainments, and so different to English ones!  Nobody bothers about even numbers.  You feel obliged to ask the X’s, the Y’s, and the Z’s from duty, and so you do.  It doesn’t in the least matter if they are mostly females; you have to ask the family, because if the daughters are grown up they can’t be left at home alone—­they would be getting into mischief.  This is the kind of assortment that arrives:  Papa X, Mamma X, and two girl X’es; Papa Y, Mamma Y, and Master and Miss Y; Papa Z, Mamma Z, Aunt Z, and Mdlle.  Z—­such a party!

Godmamma just revels in these frumps; they make Heloise furious, and the airs of Victorine, her coyness and giggling, nearly drove me wild.  I sat next to Monsieur Y, and although he is a Baron of very old family he ate like a pig.  The food was extraordinarily good, but the proof of good service here is to get the whole dinner—­of I don’t know how many courses—­over under the hour.  So one has no sooner swallowed a mouthful, when one’s plate is snatched away, and one begins to devour something else.  But with this awful man gobbling at my side, and those foolish girls giggling beyond, even the forty minutes seemed ages.

Afterwards in the salon the “jeunes filles” were sent to talk at the other side of the room, supervised by “the Tug,” who did not dine, but was in waiting.  If you had heard their conversation, Mamma!  It was worse than the day the two came to breakfast.  Just one endless string of questions to Victorine about the Marquis, with giggles over possibilities of their own fiancailles! It is so extraordinary that they can ever turn into witty, fascinating women like Heloise and the Marquise.  Of course, these are just provincial nobodies, whom Heloise would not dream of knowing in Paris; perhaps the girls there are better.

[Sidenote:  A Cure for a Fit]

Victorine told them the Marquis was “Beau comme l’Archange Michel,” and had for her “une brulante devotion!” What will she say if after all he refuses to come to the scratch!  Jean is to accompany Agnes and me up to Paris to-morrow to see us safely off to Dieppe.  I hope he won’t have another fit in the train, I shall tell Agnes to take plenty of salts and brandy in her bag, and a bottle of soda water, because I have always heard that a sudden shock is best for people in fits, and one could pop the soda water over him if the worst came to the worst.—­Now, good-night, dear Mamma, your affectionate daughter, Elizabeth.